editorial

In September 1997 the First Cyberfeminist International Who is OBN and what do they do?
took place in the Hybrid Workspace at Documenta X, in The Old Boys Network was founded in Berlin in spring
Kassel, Germany. 37 women from 12 countries partici- 1997 by Susanne Ackers, Julianne Pierce, Valentina
pated. It was the first big meeting of cyberfeminists Djordjevic, Ellen Nonnenmacher and Cornelia Sollfrank.
organized by the Old Boys Network (OBN), the first inter- OBN consists of a core-group of 3-5 women, who take
national cyberfeminist organisation. responsibility for administrative and organisational tasks,
and a worldwide network of associated members.
OBN is dedicated to Cyberfeminism. Although cyber-
feminism has not been clearly defined--or perhaps OBNs concern is to build spaces in which we can
because it hasn't--the concept has enormous potential. research, experiment, communicate and act. One
Cyberfeminism offers many women--including those example is the infrastructure which is being built by
weary of same-old feminism--a new vantage point from OBN. It consists of a cyberfeminist Server (currently
which to formulate innovative theory and practice, and under construction), the OBN mailing list and the orga-
at the same time, to reflect upon traditional feminist nisation of Real-Life meetings. All this activities have the
theory and pratice. purpose to give a contextualized presence to different
artistic and political formulations under the umbrella of
The concept of Cyberfeminism immediately poses a lot Cyberfeminism. Furthermore we create and use different
of questions. The most important ones are: 1. What is kinds of spaces, spaces which are more abstract. They
Cyberfeminism? What is hidden behind the fusion of grow out of the confusion which results through the
"cyber" and "feminism"? 2. What does Cyberfeminism interaction between virtual and real identities.
have to do with Feminism? Will the addition of "cyber" This Reader is a documentation of the First Cyberfeminist
give good old feminism another chance to fly, or is there International and contains the lectures, texts, and works
a possibility for completely new content and new chal- which were presented at the event. The meeting
lenges? 3. How do cyberfeminists deal with the new tech- covered a whole range of approaches and perspectives,
nologies? but it never claimed to be all-encompassing. Many impor-
tant approaches are missing, but you are welcome to con-
In order to start a discussion and possibly find answers tribute to the next Cyberfeminist International.
to the above formulated questions, OBN decided to in-
vite cyberfeminists from all over the world to a real life At the initiative of Corrine Petrus from Rotterdam we are
meeting. As expected, we couldnt agree on one defini- planning to hold the Second Cyberfeminist International
tion of Cyberfeminism, but agreed NOT to define the in Rotterdam in March 1999. We look forward to a
term. The strategy of keeping the term as open as pos- lively participation.
sible was consensual. As a substitute for a definition The Cornelia Sollfrank
First Cyberfeminist International formulated the Old Boys Network ([email protected])
100 Anti-Theses (see last page).
The Hybrid Workspace was a project initiated by Catherine David
in collaboration with the Berlin Biennale, and located in the
The "feminism" in Cyberfeminism is obvious, it cannot be Orangerie in Kassel. The intention was to transform the
overlooked. And that's as it should be. Feminism's heri- Orangerie into a temporary media laboratory for the collection,
tage is our life-blood, but its institutionalization in public generation, evaluation, cross-fertilization and dissemination of
information and content. Those responsible for the organiza-
life and in the academies makes it inaccessible to most tion and curation of the Hybrid Workspace included Eike Becker,
women today. In addition, the mass women's movement Geert Lovink, Pit Schultz, Micz Flor, Thorsten Schilling, Heike
http://www.obn.org

of former years has been fragmented into a bewildering Foell,Thomax Kaulmann, and others.
variety of feminismS. Identifying oneself as a woman is Additional thanks to:
no longer enough to serve as a productive connecting link. all who made our meeting possible, especially Geert Lovink for
We have to find new strategies for political action. the invitation as well as (lovely) Thorsten Schilling, who sup-
ported us during our residency at the workspace with much
patience and humor.
The new technologies have provided a powerful new
imperative for the feminist discussion. On the one hand Special thanks to Diana McCarty and Faith Wilding for proof-
new technologies provoke a discussion, because they are reading and Tilman Baumgrtel for his support.
historically male dominated, but on the other hand, they As well, our thanks go to the Berlin Senate Ministry for
also contain new means and methods of fundamentally Scholarship, Research, and Culture, the Cultural Office of the
questioning received role models and power structures, City of Hamburg, and the Australian Council for the Arts, who
of deconstructing concepts of subjectivity--as feminist provided the financial resources to make the First Cyberfeminist
International possible. A grant from the Cultural Office of the
theory has demanded already long before the raise of Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg provided partial funding for the
digial media. production of this reader.

01
 @ Hybrid WorkSpace
(Eike Becker, Geert Lovink/Pit Schultz, Micz Flor,
Heike Noell, Thorsten Schilling, Thomax Kaul-
mann and many others)

@ Berlin Biennale
(Klaus Biesenbach, Hans Ulrich Obrist,
Nancy Spector)

@ documenta X
(Catherine David)
International Cyberfeminist Organisation

***************************************************************************************
call for contribution
***************************************************************************************

Targetting content: C Y B E R F E M I N I S M
There are countries, where Cyberfeminism has had a long life and there are countries where
Cyberfeminism has never had a life. Germany belongs to the latter...
Cyber and Feminism two terms coined through recent history, ideology and evangelism.
What happens when these two words collide? Cyberfeminism is a new and promising term. It
suggests a fresh ideology, embracing the notions of "cyber" and "feminism" and all they
signify. It creates a space for women to invent, dissect and alter the trajectories of the new tech-
nological and information era.
Cyberfeminism.... Fresh ideology?
New code of behaviour?
Artistic playground?
Semiotic straightjacket?
The Old Boys' Network CONTENT strategy will be:
- collect material from literature, art and the media
- analyse and select the material
- connect people, ideas and machines
http://www.obn.org

- connect the past and future

- produce new material in a variety of media
- distribute information utilising all available networks
For these purposes the Old Boys' Network will be expanded to include eXXperts from all over
the world. Date: 20-28th of September, 1997

contact the Old Boys Network -- [email protected]

This call for contribution has been published in June 1997 via different mailing-lists. Please note: The e-mail address [email protected] is no longer valid!

02
 contents

- Editorial Cornelia Sollfrank................................................... 01

- Call for Contribution Old Boys Network................................................... 02
- Diary and impressions from the workspace ............................................................................................ 04
- do x, manifesto no. 372 Ulrike Bergermann ................................................ 08
- Info Heavy Cyber Babe Julianne Pierce ..................................................... 10
- Cyberfem.org Barbara Rechbach.................................................. 11
- The Future is Femail Verena Kuni............................................................ 13
- Cyberbodies or Stories about the political Netspace
Marina Grizinic ................................................................. 19
- notes on the political condition of cyberfeminism
Faith Wilding ........................................................ 20
- Feminism is digital Claudia Reiche ...................................................... 24
- Looking for Information, Subject and ... Alla Mitrofanova ................................................... 33
- Mother, Father, Power and Global Project Irina Aktuganova.................................................... 37
- Language versus Numbers Susanne Ackers..................................................... 39
- BRANDON Shu Lea Cheang ..................................................... 41
- Ultima Ratio Daniela Alina Plewe.............................................. 42
- Teleportacia.org Olia Lialina ............................................................ 45
- SpiderFeminism Helene von Oldenburg ........................................... 46
- Traveller's Health, Communicable Diseases... Barbara Strebel ..................................................... 50
- Superfeminisme Margarete Jahrmann ............................................ 52
- Diagnostic Tools for the New Millennium Josephine Starrs (Text by Cornelia Sollfrank) ...... 54
- The Living Debra Solomon ..................................................... 56
- Dona Matrix Kerstin Weiberg .................................................... 58
- Female Extension Cornelia Sollfrank ................................................. 60
- Enter Hack Mode Sabine Helmers .................................................... 65
- Art dAmeublement Rena Tangens ....................................................... 69
- Artist Statement Faith Wilding ........................................................ 70
- ARKZIN Vesna Jankovic and Faith Wilding ....................... 71
- Webgrrls Corrine Petrus ....................................................... 74
- Female Evolution Mathilde Mupe .................................................... 76
- FACE SETTINGS Kathy Rae Huffman and Eva Wohlgemuth ........... 78
- What is Sadie planting? Diana McCarty ..................................................... 79
- Censored information Babeth .................................................................. 80
- Bordercrossing Feminism_Cyberfeminism Ingrid Molnar ........................................................ 81
- Dolled up - a video projection Gudrun Teich ......................................................... 82
- DATA DJ
editor: Cornelia Sollfrank, Ina
Old Boys Network
layout/design: Cornelia Sollfrank Wudtke
published by: obn, August 1998
copyright: the authors
contact: [email protected]
website: www.obn.org
mailorder: www.obn.org/reader
snail mail: obn
Eppendorfer Weg 8
20259 Hamburg
cover-icon: Margarete Jahrmann, superfem
printer: St.Pauli Druckerei, Hamburg

03
 diary and impressions
hybrid workspace, kassel, september 20-28, 1997

Saturday, September 20
Our week in the Hybrid Workspace started on Saturday, the movies Glen and Glenda and The Blob. Then
with an Opening Dinner. The dinner was organized by Margarete Jahrmann gave her presentation on Avatars
Kathy Rae Huffman and Eva (see page 52) , Debra Solomon showed us her ongoing
Wohlgemuth in the tradition of project "the_living" (see page 56), which documents and
the FACE SETTING dinners (see broadcasts the daily life activities of a female digi-per-
page 78), and took place in the sona." Living, communicating, creating and being part of
Hybrid Workspace. Faith a live-experience herself
Wilding contributed a selection she attempts to be in the
of food and dinner slides from present while simulta-
the (feminist) art context. As neously relaying her expe-
most of the women who came rience to her remote audi-
together for the Cyberfeminist ence through streaming
Vali, setting up our computers International did not know each video and chat. The_living
other before, this was a good is hyper-living, living more
opportunity to get to know each other at an informal din- than once, at once."
ner.
On Sunday evening from 11
Sunday, September 21 to 1 AM, Josephine Bosma
We had already started to set up the Workspace for our hosted the Cyberfeminist
purposes on Saturday afternoon, and proceeded on radio show. Josephine had
Sunday morning. The flexible interior design allowed prepared several interviews
each group to have an individual set up. We had to with FACES members and
arrange chairs, tables, couches, partition walls, pro- broadcasted parts of them
jectors and computers. As we didnt want to be dis- interspersed with live com-
turbed too much by the documenta x audience running mentary and intense dis-
in and out, we choose a set up in the beginning, which cussion with studio guests
completely separated the lecturing and presenting cyber- which included Diana Helene and Ellen, publishing the
feminists from the audience. But all our presentations McCarty, Alla Mitrofanova, latest statistics
were projected live onto a big wall in the public part of Julianne Pierce, Verena
the Workspace. This was an experiment. We did not Kuni, Josephine Starrs, and
know if it would work-- for the audience and for us. Debra Solomon. This pro-
gram will is online available
The Sunday program started at 3 p.m. with Shu Lea as Real Audio file from the
Chaeng. She wanted to show her current project Site of Radio Internationale
BRANDON (see page 41), but unfortunately we Stadt
couldnt connect to the server in Canada where it was (www.orang.orang.de/
hosted. Therefore we improvised an interview between culture).
Shu Lea and
Monday, September 22 Daniela, formalizing conflicts
Julianne
Pierce. They After a short organizing mee-
talked about ting on Monday morning, we sat around the tables
the origins and making up questions for Diana McCarty's quiz show
the background "Who is that girl?" This turned into a really fun and funny
of her work. session in which all of us dug into our various knowled-
After that, ge banks about the history of women's achievements and
Claudia Reiche activities. We came up with almost 50 questions.
gave her lectu-
re Feminism is Our public program in the afternoon started with a pre-
digital (see sentation "Diagnostic Tools for the New Millenium" by
Tamara, Barbara, Rasa and Vesna in the computer backspace page 24) which Josephine Starrs (see page 54) who began by showing
was accompa- a 10 minute film "White" (made in collaboration with
nied with a lot of slides and very entertaining clips from

04
Francesca di Rimini) which attempts
to depict a state of madness.
Josephine also distributed her
"dating" questionnaire, Fuzzy Love,
which is part of her online dating
service Web site. "The desire for
information seems to be reaching
fetishistic proportions," she said.
She also spoke about the high
states of paranoia which the new
technologies are creating in people,
and showed us some of the "death
interfaces" on the Internet which
play on these paranoias.

Next, it was time for the _Who is

that Girl?_ quiz show. We set this
up like a TVquiz show with 3
volunteer contestants from the After the Opening Dinner
audience and Diana (as Zelda, the
Faces plant who knew the answers). Julianne Pierce After a short pause we began a discussion which was
acted as host, and Thorsten Schilling, one of the orga- initiated by Susanne Ackers who briefly recalled some
nizers of the Workspace, was the hostess who handed of the different positions taken in three texts (Josephine
out the prizes. This was great fun, with many of the Bosma's "What are words worth?", Wilding and CAE's
Faces sprinkled through the audience hooting and "Notes Toward a Political Condition of Cyberfeminism",
hollering and cheering people on. The questions proofed and Susanne's response to these pieces) which have
to be extremely hard for the audience (no big surprise here, been part of the Faces postings and discussions on
we all know that women's history is still not a topic of _feminism/cyberfeminism_. The discussion finally broke
general knowledge)--amazingly no one could even answer up because of violent hungerpangs and most of us went
the question: Who was the first woman Curator of to have a good meal at a spanish restaurant.
Documenta? Our own Diana won the prize of a bottle of
Cyberspace Perfume handed to her by the lovely Thorsten. Tuesday, September 23
The event was our best interaction with the audience to On Tuesday morning we spent more than an hour doing
date. stretching excercises and learning about RSI (repetitive
stress injury) under the expert and gentle guidance of
The third session on Monday afternoon was Verena Josephine Bosma. She strongly counsels all of us to pay
Kuni's talk: The future is femail (see page 13). The attention to what is happening to our bodies and to take
theoretical part of this talk addressed some of the action right away to change our workhabits. It was poin-
"utopic myths" of the Internet, for example, that the Net ted out that the damaging relationship between bodies
gets rid of hierarchies because there is a free inter- and computer work is also a political issue which should
change of information across boundaries; and the myth be addressed by us at another time. Thank you, Josephine,
that the Net is non-gendered because you can be any- for an instructive and relaxing time-out.....
one you want to be in cyberspace. Verena ended by
showing us some sample women's WEB pages and In the afternoon we continued our public presentations
looking at some of the tropes (especially that of the with Alla Mitrofanovas lecture cyber/net/schizo femi-
supersexed cyborg femme, and the 50's cartoon model nist embodiment (see page 33), a conversation between
from cut and paste zines "tupperware aesthetics") which Pit Schultz (one of the organizers of the Hybrid Workspace
appear repeatedly. and co-founder of the mailing list Nettime and Julianne
Pierce and Kerstin Weibergs presentation of Dona
Matrix (see page 58).

Diana Claudia Vesna J. Maggie

05
 Wednesday, September 24
After organisatorial meetings of the Task Force Groups
in the morning, we started the Wednesday program with
Rena Tangens presentation of Der Druckertreiber. For
this documentary film, which she had made together
with Barbara Thoens, she had asked different computer
specialists and hackers for a definition of printer driver
(Druckertreiber) (see page 69). The activist section was
continued by Corrine Petrus and Mathilde Mupe who
talked about their experiences with the Webgrrls in
Holland and reported on female computer handling (see
pages 74 and 76). After that we had a conversation be-
Susanne, lecturing tween Dorothea Franck and Babeth about Media as
Social sculpture (see page 80), a concept which goes
back to ideas about Social Sculpture of Joseph Beuys.

Thursday, September 25
On Thursday we had another day of glorious fall
weather. Most of us were beginning to feel much more
comfortable and happy at the Hybrid Workspace. Our
nomadic workspace home is self-organizing as cyfems
gather around 11 AM every day to clean up, plan the day,
prepare their presentations, work on their taskforces,
teach each other new nettricks, check their e-mail, and
smoke (or fight with the nonsmoker-a nonsmokerxx).
Unfortunately the architect had forgotten to integrate a
kitchen or cooking facility in the Workspace. So even the
Lunch break supply with tea and coffee was a problem during the
Our closed CF discussion centered on trying to identify
what the important topics were that we are here to talk
about. We discussed the interview with Pit and talked
further about our relationship to nettime (which is a very
close and permeable yet also problematic one). Then
Cornelia Sollfrank asked: Why are we here, and what do
we want from this week? Ideas and topics flowed thick
and fast and we were not able to discuss them all in detail.
Some of the topics: We agree that we do not want any
definitions or consensus on cyberfeminism. Instead we
might come up with a list of 100 anti-theses or non-
definitions. We want to create platforms and strategies
for transmitting the ideas and presence of cyberfeminism.
These might include a letter to festivals, venues, and
museums offering cyfem workshops, presentations, Audience
speakers and artprojects. We want to be provocative and whole week. Everything had to be prepared somewhe-
produce chaos, surprise, intensity, texts, appearances, re else and then brought to the Workspace. We wonder
works. Some of us want to develop a politics of cyber- what architects live on, when they work...
feminism which connects to issues facing women
globally. The evening ended on a note of excitement and Good News: The night before, we had our first live video
optimism and the promise that we will begin on connection on enhanced CU_SeeMe, and after five
specific taskforces (such as the public relations TF minutes we were asked to show our tits. So we showed
tomorrow). them the ( . ) ( . ) stickers and they were a big hit. So now
we've added a new sign to the cyberlexicon.

On Thursday we continued our experiment with opening

up the private part of the workspace to the public during
our presentation time between 3 and 6 pm. It was very
interesting how much time we had spent thinking about
and experimenting with our interface with the public, who
was incredibly curious about what we were doing in
here. This experiment worked pretty well, most of the
people who came in stayed, behaved well, and seemed
to be quite interested in the presentations.

Vesnas Birthday Party

06
 Unknown Cross Dressers, at the Gender Bending Party (everyboydy with a dress or skirt was welcome)

This afternoon we started with the presentation of Sabine workers, the arachnids (see page 46). We finished the lec-
Helmers Enter Hack Mode (see page 65), a fancy turing and presenting in the Hybrid Workspace week
little film made of stills, about the HIP (Hacking in with another version of the very popular game show
Progress) Festival, which had taken place in Holland one Whos that girl?. Obviously the week-end audience
month before. This film is a kind of a field research about was better educated, or more dedicated to feminist
a tribe called Hackers. After that Cornelia Sollfrank history, sometimes the whole crowd was shouting the
continued with her talk Who invented the Information answers.
Superhighway. In her lecture Cornelia gave a little
history of the term which demonstrated how propagan- After this highlight, another followed: The Gender Bending
da influences politics in the time of the information age. Party. We had distributed our invitations all over the
After that we learned from Susanne Ackers how to hack place, and were looking forward to all the men who
art history. Language versus numbers was the title of would show up in dresses or skirts, becuase this was the
her lecture (see page 39). On Thursday evening we did requirement for the party. In order to help out hose men
not go out, but had nice Italian food in the Workspace and who didnt have access to a dress or skirt and not allow
celebreated Vesnas birthday. any excuses, we offered a big selection of dresses and
skirts at the entrance door (borrowed from the Red Cross).
Friday, September 26 Everybody could rent one for the night. With a few excep-
The public session on Friday started with Ingrid Molnars tions, all men took the opportunity and followed our
lecture Bordercrossing Feminism_Cyberfeminism (see request. DJ T-Ina took care for the sound (see page 84),
page 81). For this one-hour presentation Ingrid was in front Gudrun TeichS video installation Dolled-up was
of the camera, whereas usually you could find her behind screend upon the Workspace walls (see page 82), and we
the camera, documentating the whole event on video, were dancing until early in the morning...
together with Gudrun Teich. After that we had the con-
versation between Faith Wilding and Vesna Jankovic Sunday, September 28
who talked about feminism and cyberfeminism and the The next day, Sunday, was not only the last day of our
anti-war campaign in Croatia (see page 71). Then Barbara week, but also the very last day of the documenta. After
Strebel offered us her very instructive research about cleaning up the space, we opened only a little part for
health care for virtual travellers (see page 50). Daniela the public and showed pre-recorded material from the
Plewe closed this afternoon with the demonstration of week. In the evening there was another radio-show, but
her work in progress Ultima Ratio (see page 42). Before only played material that Rasa Smite, from e-lab in Riga,
we headed off for the Spanish Restaurant, we had to start Latvia, had collected and cut together during the week.
with the preparation for the big party on Saturday...
Exhausted and happy, we left Kassel and wondered what
Saturday, September 27 would follow after the First Cyberfeminist International...
Before we started the public session on Saturday, we gave (Text: Faith Wilding, Cornelia Sollfrank)
the official press conference at 11 a.m. The whole set up
was different that day. Basically we had already
arranged the space for the party, opening up all the par-
tition walls. So we had full contact with the audience,
and as it was weekend, this meant that hundreds of
people would visit the workspace this afternoon. For the
afternoon program we had choosen very entertaining
presentations which would allow the intellectually
highly demanded documenta audience to relax a little bit
and have fun with the cyberfeminists. We started with
a dance performance of our Serbian colleagues Nina
and Vesna Manojlovic, followed by the conspiracy driven
lecture Spiderfeminism by Helene von Oldenburg, who Cornelia, cleaning the
showed us that the nets we are currently using are Workspace from Ideology
nothing but a preparation for the rule of the real net-

07
 manifesto no. 372
delete the y chromosome?
do the x?

do x
by Ulrike Bergermann
inspired by the women of the FACES-mailinglist

a message from your femalien from inner space no. 68

Dear Ladies and Gentleladies,

welcome to the most Hybrid Workspace this planet has ever evolved!
Hybrid has two meanings: first, the bastardization of areas, their sexual crossing, interbreeding, cross-breeding,
mongrel-making. Secondly: being arrogant, exaggerated, daring, presumptuous, bold. So be welcomed... to adaring
crossing of terms and beings.

1. Feminism has always been a cyborg, a notion that links rules and orientation (that is, cybernetics) to flesh and
material (that is, bodies) in a way that is not considered to be natural -- but that questions the so-called natural.

We are org, organized organisms, because we is language, and that' s how we pervaded you. The invasion star-
ted a long time ago -- your mother tongue invaded you as a baby -- writing always gets in your eyes, invented in
matriarchal cultures long before the Egypt signs.
http://www.thealit.dsn.de

No, it is not the future of feminism that lies in cyborgs, cyberspace or cyberanything. Feminism itself has always
been a cyborg, living in an alien space like the astronauts in the 1960s cosmos (where the term came up). Feminism
is a tactique to move a matrix, a technique that links technique to a body, a body that links the body to techni-
que: woman is the name for a specifically gendered body and at the same time the name for a kind of sign
processing.

And feminism is what questions sentences beginning with *xy is...*. Feminism is the name of a strategy that tries
to avoid essentialist terms but does not avoid using these terms, aiming at a non-essentialist mode.

Media theory and feminist activism both have to deal with the question of representation (how do words in a defi-
nition represent content, how do political subjects represent themselves, or: how representational structures are
ahead of any content...). So there can be no such thing as a definition, not even communication about it, not even
thinking about it, without the question of translating content into words or other signs, rather: questioning of this
linear model of translation, of what is supposed to be translation of something previous (like the so-called real life)
that may indeed be before (I am a word).

08
Now you see why *Feminism is a Cyborg*, the linking of technique and material,
language. I am a word because Each component (of a body as well as of langua-
ge) can be linked or wired to any other, if there is a code that enables the exchan-
ge of signals in a common way (Donna Haraway), because Gender is electronic text
(Sadie Plant), because of the Cyborg: She is a hypertext, not readable in a linear
way, without end or beginning (Katherine Hayles).

2. Feminism is about signs.

Feminism is the potential to understand. Not because of women being so understanding and understandable. Feminism
is the potential(ity) of word processing. Understanding means: to understand differently. Differences are the con-
dition of any communication, because it enables to tell one sign from the other. Meaning is based on difference,
and we are going to give some very different meaning to you.

You may consider feminism as the activity eg. of the web, of the work caused by TCP/IP, as a translating and trans-
porting process - but not in an essentialist sense, based on considerations of multitasking or breeding like: Women
have always been busy in the household managing parallel tasks, or: Women as mothers are naturally suited for
creating, producing..., because this way *woman* would remain the product of biological and social norms, defi-
ned by the old categories, instead of deconstructing them.

There are such things like women's issues: because the internet is made of words, and that's why the feminist theo-
retical tradition of considering the making of words, meaning, text or hypertext finds a space here that is different
from everyday life (while of course everyday life can also been described as a product of symbolic structures). A
medium that consists of different codes (letters, HTML codes, bits and bytes, down to the positive or negative vol-
tage of disk and wire segments) is mostly apparent to be worked in + on when it comes to the topic of codes (codes
that make up women: make up/no make up, clothes, children/no children, woman/weman/ wiman/waman...).

Feminism is the name of a processing model and a practice, of an ideology as well as of a new way of linking signs,
combining notions, understanding the world. That does not mean that any given subject only must acquire the right
intention to join in. This is not about subjects and intentions. Not about genitals either, but on the cultural effec-
ts of genitals as words or social systems.

It focuses on questioning centers like the self. It does not focus at all but deconstructs the metaphoricities inhe-
rent in the systems by using them upon themselves.

So that cyberfeminism is a figure: a model of how sign processing works (which is political: politics consist of signs),
a corpse of discourses, a shape of things to come (see illustrations).*Weibliches als Verfahren*, femininity as pro-
cessing (as proposed by Marianne Schuller and Eva Meyer) aimes to work on the process of the creation of mea-
ning in text, yet referring from this apparently formal side to what is called content by naming a certain practice
with the word feminine, so that the duality of form and content becomes doubtful. Woman
is an effect of word processing. Woman effects word processing.

3. DO THE X

In these sentences, you are asked to keep on writing the body sign of female genes: X X X
.
Do not use the old DOS command to delete (d), do not d the x. You might want to delete the
y chromosome. Then x-ray and cross out the delete order. Signs can be rewritten, what is dele-
ted will not really leave, so just cross out whatever hinders processing. Don't try to extinguish.
Rewrite the command: let d mean do.
Then: DO THE X. Mark what has to be deconstructed, rewritten, combined newly.

Sign now.

09
 Julianne Pierce

info heavy
cyber babe
In 1991, in a cosy Australian city called Adelaide, four guard don't need feminism anymore. So in this time of
bored girls decided to have some fun with art and French labels and brand names, perhaps we should abandon
feminist theory. Creating themselves as a mini corpora- 'cyberfeminism'. There is no longer one cyberfeminism,
tion, VNS Matrix, they made their first text/artwork 'A there are now many cyberfeminisms -- as it grows and
cyberfeminist manifesto for the 21st Century'; with ho- mutates and is adapted by the growing number of
mage to Donna Haraway they began to play around with digital tribes.
the idea of cyberfeminism. As with many corporate slo-
gans, cyberfeminism caught on, and like a wave of grrrl The updated version of cyberfeminism is more about
glory it spread its tentacles to many far reaching places. networking, webgrrrls, geek girls, FACES, OBN, online
publishing, career prospects, list servers and international
Beginning as if by spontaneous combustion, from a few conferences. It's about Hybrid Workspace and the 100
hot nodes in Europe, America and Australia, cyberfemi- anti-theses, it's about getting grants and funding to
nism became a viral meme infecting theory, art and the create opportunities to meet and make work. It's about
academy. It arose as a response to popular culture -- video training and creating opportunities, making money, doing
games, the internet and especially Gibson's notion of business and doing deals. It's embracing diversity and
cyberpunk. If the new breed of techno-cowboys could difference, being opinionated, being loud and at times
jack-in at will, well so could the grrrls. And with a ven- staying quiet. But the key to all of this is information, in
geance, girls got digital and the information society, to get
used the language of the new ahead you must control the
techno-culture to create their commodity. Information is poli-
own conceptual vanguard. tical, it's a weapon, and the
more knowledge we have, the
Cyberfeminism was about more powerful we are.
ideas, irony, appropriation and
hands-on skilling up in the data The early heady days of cyber-
terrain. It combined a utopic feminism created a space
vision of corrupting patriarchy where the imagination could
http://sysx.apana.org.au/jules

with an unbounded enthusiasm fire, gender could be re-

for the new tools of technology. written and the promise of the
It embraced gender and identity post human released us from
politics, allowing fluid and non- the drudgery of post modern
gendered identities to flourish identity crisis. These spaces
through the digital medium. The are important for dreaming,
post corporeal female would be for creating a space for other-
an online frontier woman, creating our own virtual worlds ness -- but while we confront our subjectivities, Bill
and colonising the amorphous world of cyberspace. Gates is making $500 a second. Big Daddy is flourishing
and the suits control the data stream. The new cyber-
This first version of cyberfeminism was a flame, a feminism is about confronting the top-down with the
moment, a spam which became hip. It was an impulse bottom-up, creating a culture where the info heavy cyber
which became a commodity. babe can create her own space within a complex and
clever info society. It's about creating foundations to
Cyberfeminism is an incredibly important 'movement', it build upon, so that in the next millennium we can carve
somehow embraces a growing groundswell of activism own our paths, create our own corporations... in the
and access for women using all forms of digital media. words of VNS Matrix -- unbounded, unleashed, un-
It is certainly a 'feminism', as it advocates that women forgiving... we are the future cunt.
participate in creating and defining the present and
future of techno culture. But somehow the 'feminism' is Julianne Pierce's participation at Hybrid Workspace was
the problem, some of the old guard see it as a vacuous assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the
fashion statement (a sort of cyberspice), and the young Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

10
Barbara Rechbach

cyberfem.org
Are there any feminist (counter)strategies in electronic space?

At the beginning of my interest in cyberfem.org I asked Cyberfeminism as an appropriation of the toys for boys,
myself two questions: advocating a new connection between women and machi-
- What do feminist approaches to the electronic space nes. Their manifestos, articles and artworks like the cd-
look like, approaches which not only react to new media rom All New Gen proposed a model of a feminist coun-
and communications technologies, but which also use terpractice in electronic arts.
them for their own purposes?
- Is there any feminist location in electronic space wor- Cyberfeminists are not anti-technology, on the contrary,
king with current techno-theories without supporting their they are technophiles and geeks who cant get enough
intrinsic techno-determinisms? of their machines
(Juliane Pierce, VNS Matrix)
Cyberfeminism is a promising new wave of (post)femi-
nist thinking and practice Although VNS matrix could establish themselves as a
(Faith Wilding and the Critical Art Ensemble) critical voice in cyberspace, since their intense attacks
were in opposition to a male-dominated computer(art)
Feminist artists and theorists view their media production world, some of their messages like the clitoris is the direct
as an attempt to attack patriarchal paradigms of new line to the matrix is a rather diffuse example of critique,
media technology in both criticising their sexist trying to escape any concrete debates about the impacts
structure and yet re-animating them for their own uses. of new technology: important questions such as access
The basic question is whether it is possible to use to cyberspace and repressive uses of media are being
technology against its original purposes which are ser- rather ironically answered :
ving the creation of hierarchic subject positions. We feel ourselves attached to the revolutionary
underground and articulate our standpoint out of
Cyberfeminism could mean an up-to-date feminism: this perspective
while old kinds of feminism emphazised a technopho-
bic relationship with technology by calling technology a Technology is sexy (Sadie Plant)
patriarchical instrument of power and control, is feminism
with the new prefix cyber right in the center of temporary Sadie Plant also tries to link women and technology in
discussions? This was at least the firm conviction of a new way; in her opinion Cyberfeminism also means an
VNS Matrix, an Australian group of artists/media activists, attack on partriarchical subject constructions.
who could be introduced as the inventors of an expli-
cit use of the term Cyberfeminism and its implications: The male is basically becoming redundant.
Feminism must urgently be changed and adopted
to the contemporary thinking, and cyberfeminism Plant confronts dominant fiction of technology with her
has brought up these issues into technology dis- very own story of technology and feminism. In the worlds
course which are important to women first cyberfem webzine, geekgirl, she speaks in the
(VNS-Matrix in an interview with Nova Delahunty at the tradition of technodeterminism, but in reverse:
ars electronica 96) Im working on cyberfeminism at the moment which sug-
gests that there is an intimate and possibly subversive
This statement leads to the question of whether actual element between women and machines -- especially
thinking is a desirable goal in itself and which thinking the new intelligent machines -- which are no longer sim-
is deemed desirable and which not. It would be impor- ply working for man as women are no longer simply wor-
tant to mention if actual thinking also includes criticism king for man (....) Capitalism, commodities, new
on actual situations -- does it support oppositional prac- machinery and women - all the things that served mans
tice over a dominant use and theoreticisation of new ends - are starting to pick up and go their own way. This
media, or is its intention the re-working of a dominant is on a global scale.
cyberdisourse? VNS Matrix used this provocative con-
frontation of new cyberfeminist theory/practice vs. old- Plants construction of cyberfeminism is about the idea
fashioned critics for the first time in advertising their of the end of patriarchy, since digital revolution will bring

11
 the collapse of traditional gendered role models. Women
are supposedly more appropriate in working with digital
media because of their lack of an autonomous subject
position which is threatened by new media technologies.
Plant maintains they were conditioned to work as media-
tors, as in-betweens, not being one.

Cyberspace is out of mans control - virtual reality

destroys his identity, digitalization is mapping his soul and,
at the peak of his triumph, the culmination of his
machinic erections, man confronts the system he built for
his own and finds it female and dangerous.
doll yoko
Equating the development of machines with the deve-
lopment of feminist positions is at least since Friedrich One of the great contradictions of Virtual Reality is that
Kittlers announcement of emancipation through typewrit- it titillates our imagination, promising the marvels and
ing, a classic model of connecting women with techno- wonders of a gender-free world whilst simultaneously
logy, however it opens the problem of a techno-deter- reproducing some of the most banal, flat images of gen-
ministic point of view. In comparing the developing of der identity, but also class and race relations that you can
autonomously acting machines with the emancipation think of. (Rosi Braidiotti)
of women Plant commits herself to the myth of a femi-
nine technology tha women are especially symbionic Cyberfeminism could offer a way out of determined use
with. of technology. The problem was to enter cyberspace and
create positions without repeating old mistakes: the
In this point, Plants theory is connected to Donna feminist practices of counterstories could be an impor-
Haraways metaphor of the female cyborg, an oppositio- tant tool for entering into the discourses about techno-
nal feminist figure. Haraway too wants to connect women logy, but its easy to go beyond the border of re-instal-
with technology in a severe appropriation of technomy- ling dichotomic myths and exclusions.
ths. Whereas former cyborgs were created by men and
through that defend their creators capitalistic technology, To act-as-if could be a starting position for cyber-
the female cyborg offers a possibility for feminist feminist acting:
politics. Unfortunately Haraway doesnt explain the forms
of politics further... Feminist women who go on functioning in a society as
female subjects in these postmetaphysical days of
Lets take up the coding games! decline of gender dichotomies, act as if Woman was still
Haraway stands for a feminist infiltration into the ... It their location. (Rosi Braidotti)
is important to get competent in the field of digital media
in order to challenge the prevailing authority. A kind of strategic essentialism is an imortant method
to gain access to the electronic space:
Using the Internet could be seen as the preferred cyber- In so doing, however, they treat femininity as one
feminist strategy, as the Internet in general, is the desi- option in a set of available poses, a set of costumes rich
red object of divergent projections: in history and social power relations, but not fixed or com-
Whether in the approach of a free market for free citi- pulsory any longer. They simultaneously assert and de-
ziens as in Californian Ideology or in propagating a contruct Woman as a signifying practice.
Global Village with a Virtual Reality, where any real-life Quotes from:
discriminations have vanished automatically, many appro- -- Faith Wilding and the Critical Art Ensemble:
aches emphasize the emancipatory potential and the <www.obn.org/cfundef/condition.html>
anti-hierarchic structure of digital communication net- -- vns matrix manifesto:
works. Sadie Plant calls the net a female technology <http://www.aec.at/meme/symp/contrib/vns.html>
since its structure destroys traditional male forms of -- vns matrix:
communications in supporting female qualities like emo- <http://sysx.apana.org.au/artists/vns>
tional binding. -- Rosi Bradidotti:
<http:// www.let.ruu.nl/womens-studies/rosi>

VNS Matrix

12
Verena Kuni

The Future is Femail

Some Thoughts on the Aestetics and Politics of Cyberfeminism

What intrigues me, is being alternative and completely own words and renounced a professional translation. I
conformist at the same time. hope readers will excuse this and will be able to follow
k.d. lang me on a rather bumpy and clumsy path anyway.
(0.1) Something like a preface (0.2) The Future is Femail!
The following text mirrors the attempt to reproduce a lec- Now, just to add an ad for Cyberfeminism - and to start
ture I gave not only during but within the framework with my Kassel starter, let us admit that....
of a meeting of more than forty international artists, The Future is Femail. This is a fact most men seem not
theorists and activists from thirteen countries: The First to be capable of accepting - except in the case it is
Cyberfeminist International; a meeting that took place called Barbarella and has the body shape of Jane Fonda.
during a warm September week in 1997, was framed Just look at the example shown in the first issue of
within another framework: The Hybrid Workspace, which Konr@d, the new computer zine of Gruner&Jahr
was framed by another framework: the documenta X. As publishers, where the data highway is transformed into
my first lecture on Cyberfeminism had taken place only a fashion portfolio starring Naomi Campbell, her eyes
two and a half months ago, in the same city - Kassel -, modestly cast down and her knees bent inwards, as a
but in a different framework, an interdisciplinary congress supersexy and supersexed female Cyborg.
dealing with the relationships between media and arts,
I was especially interested in the fact that for this second One of the issues of Cyberfeminism should be to question
opportunity to discuss the same issue not only the con- how to get even with old-fashioned fantasies of that kind
text, but also the public had shifted significantly. Whereas and to throw a pinch of sand into the gears of cybernetic
my first Kassel lecture's public had been people working bachelor's machines (Junggesellenmaschinen), how to
in the field of cultural sciences (i.e. art history, philoso- finish off the damned sexist-machistic colonialisation
phy, literature, media theory), well trained in feminist of Cyberspace...
theory, but for the most part newbies to the field of
internet practice -- and most of them had never heard any- (1) The Internet: New Ground to Break?
thing about Cyberfeminism before, my second Kassel New media tend to be decribed as new ground to break,
lecture's public were artists as well as theorists more or a kind of virgin soil waiting for conceptual and artistic
less trained in feminist theory, but intimate with the reclamation, where all the carefully conserved and well
internet - and more or less identifying with the issue of traded structures and power politics cease to be valid
Cyberfeminism. either because they have not been able yet to gain a foot-
hold or cannot be established for reasons of complete
Consequently, I did not want to repeat my first lecture incompatibilty anyway. Unfortunately, this is an all too
mechanically, but at the same time I was very curious if simplistic view. As we can learn from other fields of
and how some of my theses would be discussed within practice, any medium is as new, open, fluid, revealing
a different framework and by a significantly different and/or revolutionary as the people it is used by - and any
public. And as my talk centered on questions of visual use of any kind of media is to be reflected within its con-
representation of gender, I was especially interested to text, especially within the sociological framework where
discuss my observations with those who - being artists it takes place. A new medium can become a tool to
(re-)presenting their work in the visual field of the World create new structures as well as a place to install them
Wide Web - were themselves concerned with this issue only if the users (and, what might be even more im-
in their everyday practice. Though there were fruitful portant, those who have access to the related resources)
discussions and face-to-face conversations following are interested in changes - and, given that interest, if they
the talk, after leaving Kassel I was not through with continue to succeed in looking after it for a while.
the issue at all, hence I continued to read, to think, to
speak and to write about it. Because of this the task of According to this no one will be surprised that any deve-
contributing a documentation of my thoughts presented lopment as well as any use of new media is accompa-
at Hybrid Workspace turned out to be more complicated nied by pertinent utopias and myths. But it follows as well,
than expected: though I'd already written it, I felt I would that there won't be a media revolution for its own sake
have to rewrite it again and again. To come to a point at - hence if you want to change the world, there is still a
last, I decided to handle my problem as follows: By lot to be done. The fundamental potential of a new me-
adding further questions, discussions, references, dium will have to be discovered, claimed and defended.
scepticism, loss of enthusiasm, new enthusiasm and like If this can be claimed for any new media you choose, the
between the lines, I tried to preserve the original talk for relatively new medium internet and it's graphic interface,
the main text as much as possible. Doing this, with re- the world wide web, shall not be deemed an exceptio-
spect to the original athmosphere of the talks determi- nal case. Relating to the fact that in the first years (lea-
ned by very different skills in the use of English ving out it's prehistory in military technology) internet was
correspondig to the fact that the majority of us were not perceived as a kind of underground technology where
native speakers I also dared literally to fall back upon my different cultural and social practices could take place,

13
 it is still being associated with a bunch of pertinent But once you have access to the internet you will discover
utopias or myths, two of which might be of special another aspect of the fact that female voices are under-
interest for everybody dealing with the theories and represented in the internet (and at last one reason for it,
practices of Cyberfeminism: too): the real existing sexisms, from the special attention
1. The internet seems to allow and to support commu- you are paid to the mean verbal harrassment you encoun-
nication and exchange across borders and hierarchies in ter almost wherever you log in with a female ID. Within
a way that enables its users to leave structures of power the spreading branches of the World Wide Web we can
as established by other media (i. e. the one way struc- find a growing world wide market for any kind of por-
ture of the so called mass media) behind. (Utopia of a nography, and whenever you feed your search engine with
non-hierarchical distribution and communication of the key words woman/women or girl/girls you will
information) be flooded immediately with thousands of URLs with per-
2. The fact that normally net communication is based on tinent offers.
language or a visual representation formed by the users 3.Old boys' club internet: Last but not least let us take
themselves (the so-called net persona) suggests that a look at the users. One could say: If computers and
one can communicate without respect to actual persons, internet technology are being sold as toys for (old) boys,
and this would also mean: without reference to the bodi- the World Wide Web is the playground, we'll say - as
ly gender (the sex) of the person that communicates. mentioned above - the most profitable soil for marketing
(Utopia of a net-existence independent from real life strategies. But what about the people working in and with
sex) the internet, be it as microslaves, as engineers or as
hackers, be it as artists or critics? Let us take a closer look
Taking both net-utopias literally, one could conclude that at the scene of net art and activism. At first sight,
the internet as a new medium should be especially appro- compared to other scenes (i. e. the music business, the
priate to encouraging women to act independently from established art scene and art market, the universities and
the traditional, highly gender-coded hierarchies and so on), the situation for women working in this field
systems of reference. seems to be far better.
(2) It's a Men's World But taking the literature being published, the authors being
On the other hand many people perceive the internet as printed, the lecturers being invited to and heard at
a space dominated by males, as a men's world. Why? Let's bigger conferences, it is more than obvious that - espe-
try out a quiz and quote some possible reasons: cially in Europe - women are still underrepresented,
especially in the range of important positions and well
1.Women and technology - One of the current internet paid jobs. Even if you take the inevitable presence of male
myths is that internet itself is a male technology" and bigmouths for granted, one has to ask for the reasons why
because of this fact it is a male coded domain from the the traditional gender relations are still that vital in an
beginning - an assertion which is justified by the nexus area widely discussed as a temporary autonomous
between military technology and computer technology, zone. One has to realize that, similar to his R.L. an-
i. e. the common history of these technologies which go cestors from the turn of the last century, the Data
back to the arpanet. This argument is being used by Dandy however proud he may be of queering the space,
some essentialist or esoteric-minded Eco-Feminists as will also continue practising misogyny as a traditional
well as by all those who pronounce women peaceful by part of his radical chic. And if feminist critique is an im-
nature or for whatever reason being better than men only portant issue of net criticism, he will always be the
to cut them off from resources or to prevent them from better feminist.
filling leading positions.
This is sheer rubbish, of course. More serious is another As we have seen, far from being an undefined or neu-
argument referring to the current complex of pertinent tral space where tradional structures and politics have
phantasmata in the field of computer and internet tech- lost their basis the internet is - as Kay Schaffer used to
put it - a contested zone, a battlefield undermined by
nologies, especially fantasies in the course of which the the same power politics and gender wars that are being
computer is perceived as a kind of bachelor's machine. fought everywhere else in our society. The question is how
The subject of male technology "seems to work like a self to deal with the new level of technology. At this point,
fullfilling prophecy wherever it has to work as a motor Cyberfeminism becomes an issue of interest.
for fantasies of exclusive professionality - and this is the
case wherever technology gadgets are sold as toys for
boys". (3) But what the hell is 'Cyberfeminism'? A definiti-
But of course, at this point we also could ask: Is it on beyond definitions
really a problem that women are ignored by the market? At the same time as we started using the concept of
Cyberfeminism, it also began to appear in other parts of
2.The real existing sexism: Looking at the statistics, the world. It was like a spontaneous meme which
internet seems to be a male dominated domain indeed. emerged at around the same time, as a response to
At first glance, a closer look at the internet itself might ideas like 'cyberpunk' which were popular at the same
confirm this impression: male dominated newsgroups, time. (Julianne Pierce/VNS Matrix)
mailing list and so on. Personally, I do not believe in the
importance of numerical proportions. When you look at Cyberfemism is and is not, there are loads of de-
a Harem, where quite a lot of women are grouped finitions. No wonder that in the preparations for the
around one man, it is not interesting how many people First Cyberfeminist International meeting during the dX
of one or another gender are there to speak for them- harsh disputations flared up on the FACES mailinglist
selves, it is the question of hierarchy, the possiblity to whenever the question What is Cyberfeminism? came
speak that counts. Of course, it is still important to encou- up. And no wonder at all that after one week of intense
rage women to use computer technologies and to show discussions and exchanges in the end there was no con-
them how to use the internet for their own purposes. And sensus manifesto, but a chain of one hundred Anti-
of course this is still a problem of access to certain Theses that would tell you what Cyberfeminism is not.
resources (an unpaid housewife might have more pro- But of course we have to ask ourselves if Cyberfeminism
blems to raise money for a personal computer, a modem, - once understood not only as a Zeitgeist phenomenon
and internet access - and to gain some minutes to use it). but as a movement or a tool - will be able to escape the

14
corset of a (self-)definition instead of installing or incor- nology is a deadly game, the notion of a feminist poten-
porating itself as a model, and as such as a tangible tial of cyberspace owes much to the author of the already
body of discourses that finally will be rated, gendered, legendary Manifesto for Cyborgs. With the Manifesto
sexualized and put in a corset again. Haraway argued against the cultural dichotomies between
male technology and female nature to propose a
Indeed the discourses on the issue in the current prac- different notion of a hybrid or fragile self whose capa-
tices seem to prove the absolute heterogeneity of cities are no longer built up on a concept of identity and
possible Cyberfeminisms, and they can show in how demarcation, but rather on diverging concepts of em-
many different ways possible concepts of Cyberfeminism bodiment, difference and solidarity. For Haraway, there
can be defined, discussed and brought into practice. is no consistent or natural notion of femininity or
This kept in mind, we have to ask: Is Cyberfeminism womanhood and especially no state of being that
nothing but a poor attempt to sum up feminist activities could be called women. In the contrary, we'd have to
on the net? realize that women is just a category constructed by
But how to deal with the gestures of rejection and within our tradition of social and scientific
Cyberfeminists articulate against traditional feminism? practices. With this in mind, her figuration of the Cyborg
And what about a possible critique of Cyberfeminism that can be understood as a discursive vehicle to escape
could be stated from the so called traditional feminist from the associative power of a concept itself highly
point of view? infected by cultural dichotomies.
We will have to take a closer look to the theoretical Of course, Sadie Plant herself is far from understanding
framework of Cyberfeminism, where the issue was femininity as an essentialist pledge, but rather as
brought up prominently by the British cultural theorist being a result of cultural contigency:We cannot trace out
Sadie Plant. As Plant put it in an interview with RosieX what 'female' means - we can only learn from history how
from Geekgirl magazine, her point of departure for a 'femininity' was defined. From her point of view the de-
theory of Cyberfeminism was the impression that there cisive point for the developement of a future femini-
is an intimate and possibly subversive element between sation of culture is to be seen in its autodynamic
women and machines - especially the new intelligent potential attended by effects of deterritorialisation that
machines - which are no longer simply working for man counteract and subsequently dissolve the power of top-
as women are no longer simply working for man. In con- down-structures, thus nourishing a new subversive
sequence, she describes Cyberfeminism as an alliance energy. An energy, as Plant puts it, that already takes
developed between women, machinery and the new effect for example wherever women artists work
technology that women are using. It seemed to me a lot consciously with means of replication and simulation
of women really love this type of technology and because rather than referring to traditional strategies of repre-
of the 'toys for boys' complex it was curious that they did. sentation. At this point, it seems to be near at hand that
I thought women should be encouraged to go with their electronic media - as they are principally supporting
desire, to start with I simply used the word different techniques of replication and simulation - should
'Cyberfeminism' to indicate an alliance. A connection. match a correspondent artistic practice perfectly. Sounds
Then I started research on the history of feminism and like good news for feminist artists working with new tech-
the history of technology. It occured to me that a long stan- nologies: Is Cyberfeminism just another name for a new
ding relationship was evident between information tech- born feminist avant-garde?
nology and women's liberation. You can almost map But we know that in talking about the artistic use of elec-
them onto each other in the whole history of modernity. tronic media we have to distinguish between different
Just as machines get more intelligent, so women get more facilities, i.e. between text-, sound-, image-based media
liberated! and the so called multi-media, between network based
Following Plant, this correlation is being based on the fact systems and the different uses, different protocols and
that from the beginnings in a male dominated culture so on. And we already heard about the specific
women have always been the machine parts being the problems women working in and with electronic net-
means of reproducing the species, reproducing commu- works have to face once past the subliminal shift from
nications [...] which is obviously similar to the role of Mythos Internet to the harsh reality of daily internet
machines and tools. Regarding this connection as a practice. Especially if we do not want to rely on deterri-
cultural heritage, women should take it as a positive torializing effects of feminisation only, we will have to
opportunity to use the alliance to technology as a basis ask ourselves about specific effects of new media tech-
for liberation. Even more radical is Plant's thesis that nologies that might seriously interfere with the break with
according to this strong connection between women concepts of representation as claimed by Sadie Plant. To
and techology the technological development itself could answer this question in relation to the aesthetics and
be perceived as a feminization of culture that will lead politics of Cyberfeminism, the World Wide Web as an
us to an increasing dissolution of gender by the way of expanding field not only of feminist activities, but also
feminization of male identity: men connecting them- of artistic practice seems to be an appropriate area to
selves to or indentifying themselves with machines discuss.
switch to role models traditionally being identified with
women. We will see enormous changes in the whole (4) Label it! On Netchicks and PopTarts
notion what it is to be human. Women are just starting Similar to the multitude of different notions and concepts
to realise that they have been defined by a male defini- of Cyberfeminism discussed in the field of theory we can
tion. As men slide out of this definition of identity, as they find a broad range of Cyberfeminist presence on the
become more feminine, I doubt women will stay where Web: from personal homepages to ambitious zines, from
they are. [...] Women too will become more feminine - webrings, jumping stations and networks to artistic pro-
even though we have no idea what that is. We are going jects there is a growing number of sites provided by
to experiment with it: we are going to find it out." women that are not only dealing with feminist issues, but
also associate themselves explicitly with the label
Even if Plant's radical affirmation of the techological Cyberfeminist. But how can we distinguish between
development seems to form a clear contrast to Donna feminist and Cyberfeminist webwork? As I have
Haraway's critical reflections and her thesis that tech- already pointed out, regarding the discussions about the

15
 relations between Cyberfeminism and the so called Old Riotgrrl movement that emerged from the music scene
school feminism on one hand, and the continuing dis- during the eighties and transferring it into cybersphere,
agreements between different feminist and Cyberfeminist as it is the case in site-names like PlanetGrrl, GeekGrrl
positions on the other hand side it does not make very and so on. Similar to the Riotgrrl movement in music (or
much sense to define Cyberfeminism as the sum of the Bad Grrls in contemporary fine arts), this is also
feminist activities. According to my account of a about the need to be part of a scene and at the same time
possible Cyberfeminist theory as discussed above in the keep one's distance to the gender politics it is ruled by.
context of Sadie Plant's notion of Cyberfeminism I would As Chrystal Tiles from the Feminist Pop Tarts puts it:.
tend to propose another definition. I would like to define A very practical reason grrrls/geeks/nerds use these
Cyberfeminist practice as both a political and aesthetic codewords in titles or our site is to make it clear that we're
strategy - and, as I would also like to add: a strategy wor- not naked and waiting for a hot chat with you! I mean,
king consciously with means of replication and simulation just do an infoseek search using the keyword 'girl' or
rather than referring to traditional strategies of repre- 'woman' and see what you find. Cybergirl.com (not to be
sentation. But how far does this definition fit into a medi- confused with Cybergrrl!) is a nekkid-chick.gif site or
um like the World Wide Web that by itself is something [...] Ever heard about the cliche 'It's not a
loaded with one of todays most common means of repre- man's world, it's a boy's world'? Well, I think of girl,
sentation: the image? Well, representation is not only built geek, grrl, etc. as words women of whatever age can use
up on visuals, and do not forget that basically the WWW to signify that we refuse to play the circumscribed, no-
is nothing but a big hypertext. Unfortunately, this win, lady/cutie/muffin/angel/whore/bitch game, and a
doesn't make things better at all. way to fight back against the boys will be boys and old
boys stuff that is so subtle, yet so powerful in our society.
Net politics begin with the naming of a domain or a site
- and in general this will be a name that defines not only Following this, it seems that within the Name Space
its geographic or physical origins, but also the contextual of the World Wide Web Cyberfeminist Grrlism is not
and ideal framework a project is situated in. According only a means to create and to claim free spaces for
to this, let us look at how feminist and Cyberfeminist pro- women in the net, but a strategy of masquerade as a tool
jects deal with this tool. What can be noticed here gene- to undermine dominating gender politics that keep con-
rally is that on the one hand a majority of feminist as well trol over the female data set (i. e. visual or linguistic
as Cyberfeminist sites refer to a spectrum of terms more objectifications of that which male netusers regard as
or less explicitly associated with femininity resp. the female) as well.
female sex. On the other hand the way this term is re- Furthermore we will see, this strategy is not only im-
lated to the female sex seems to be a first criterion to portant for the naming, but also for the visual design of
distinguish between feminist and cyberfeminst presence Cyberfeminist web projects, as I will try to demonstrate
on the Web. At first hand, this can be mentioned as an in my sketch of an iconology of Cyberfeminist webde-
indication for the unease of a younger generation against sign following below. By trying to find categories and
concepts developed by an older one that worked on a common grounds I do not intend to return to the proble-
different basis not only considering the historic situati- matic issue of a female, feminine or feminist aesthe-
on and the socio-political context, but also considering tic. Rather, my purpose here is to describe Cyberfeminism
the media available to work with - and therefore leading by the means of its aesthetical and political strategies -
not only to a different self understanding, but also to and thereby to develop perspectives on the representa-
different strategies. As RosieX from the CyberFemZine tion of gender in the visual field of World Word Web.
GeekGirl remarks, even the idea of a movement it-
self is based on an older style feminist rhetoric which (5) Masquerades of the Cyborg
tended to homogenize all women with the same Regarding the Web as a visual field and stating that
wants/needs/desires to embrace each other [...]. It's just Cyberfeminist politics include the screendesign, we will
not applicable for women who use the internet as a have to take a closer look at the constituting elements
medium for their message or is that massage? Heh, a like the construction of a site, the use of logos and
bunch of us girls really like each other but we certainly frames as well as colours, background textures and so on.
don't pizz in each other's pockets for ideas and strength.
At first let us ask what a Cyberfeminist website could look
Whereas feminist projects tend to relate to terms like like. Is there a possibility for an imaginary with a
woman or femina or to go back to names grasped Cyberfeminist bent? For quite a lot of theorists in the field
from the pool of history and mythology like Ariadne, of Cyberfeminism the use of new technologies is more
Elektra or Sappho - thereby following similar concepts or less closely associated with the desire to erect a new
to many projects during the first and second wave of femi- symbolic order in cyberspace that allows not only for
nist movement that tried to point out the need for imagining notions of identity and sexuality beyond the
consciousness about a female identity, herstory and binary code, but to incorporate them as well. In this con-
so on - looking at projects associating themselves with text, the figuration of the Cyborg as outlined by Donna
the concept of Cyberfeminism we can find a remarkable Haraway plays an important role as a synthetic techno-
predilection for the use of a special slang I would like to flesh being that in itself already dissolves the gendered
describe as an ironic play with the so called toys for boys, knot beween body and cultural identity:
recognizing traditional notions of female identity as The Cyborg as an imaginary figure and as lived experi-
already prestructured by the male perceptions of the ence changes the notion of what in the end of twentieth
female. For example, there are quite a lot of names using century is being understood as the experience of women
and sometimes also fusing the world of computer tech- [...] Up till now (once upon a time), female embodiment
nology with phrases normally used as vulgars for women, seemed to be given, organic, necessary, and female
for female sexuality or for ugly feminist, as in Clara embodiment seemed to reside in mothering and its meta-
Sinclairs Netchicks Homepage, Akke Wagenaars phoric extensions. Only by being out of place could we
RadicalPlaygirls, Crystal Tiles Feminist Pop Tarts, take intense pleasure in machines, and then with excuses
the german Cyberweiber - and yes, we can even put that this was organic activity after all, appropriate to fe-
the notion of Cyberfeminism into this category. Another males. Cyborgs might consider more seriously the
major part of the projects refer in a similar way to the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex and sexual embo-
word girl changing it into grrl and thereby citing the diment. Gender might not be global identity after all.

16
Cyborgs are creatures of a post-gender world. Nothing hide or to repress femininity and therefore a female desi-
connects them to bisexuality, preoedipal symbiosis, non- re that could be able to found a difference that is not
alienated work or other temptations to come up with or- supressed by the male subject and that would reveal the
ganic wholeness by the way of submission of partial necessary failure of masculinity? Or is masquerade just
power under a higher entity. Cyborg gender is a local the opposite, the means by which femininity is founded,
possibility, a partial identity. There is no drive in Cyborgs the excluding process of formation of an identity that rules
to produce total theory, but there is an intimate experi- out masculinity effectively and banishes it beyond the
ence of boundaries, their construction and decon- boundaries of any specific feminine gendered position?
struction. Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the
maze of dualisms in which we have explained our tools Finally, to be more specific by picking up again Sadie
to ourselves. This is a different dream of a common Plant's idea of a Cyberfeminist alliance and thereby
language. It means both building and destroying ma- coming back to our reflections about possible strategies
chines, identities, categories, relatioships, spaces, sto- for visual artists working on and with the World Wide
ries. I would rather be a Cyborg than a goddess. Web: Is it possible to understand masquerade as a stra-
tegy of representation beyond representation, let's say:
But how to imagine a feminist Cyborg that is embodi- a representation that in the same moment undermines
ment and at the same time able to escape from the tra- traditional concepts of representation by using techniques
ditional matrix of representation? From the beginning, the of replication and simulation, irony and parody?
imagery of female machines and mechanical she-dolls
was a highly gendered one, the image of a perfect crea- With this in mind I would like to finish by looking at that
ture built and directed by man to fulfill his needs and de- what we could call the current reality of Cyberfeminist
sires - and last but not least, being that perfect, also an practice on the World Wide Web, thereby trying to con-
incarnation of all male fears. Just think of E.T.A. dense the results of my investigations in this field into
Hoffmann's Olympia, the Eve Future of Villier d'Isle a short summary of that what I called before an icono-
d'Adam, the RoboMaiden Maria in Fritz Langs logical reflection" of the aesthetics and politics of
Metropolis and so on. No wonder, the over-sexualized Cyberfeminism. In so doing, I am proceeding from the
Cyborgs of today's popular science fiction imagery every- assumption of the World Wide Web as a kind of graphic
where present from comic and magazines, movies and interface that can be understood as an arena of visual
videos to software images, computer games and cd rom representation where aesthetics and politics are woven
fit perfectly into this tradition. As Claudia Springer has together inseparably.
mentioned, especially the popular representations of
Cyborgs rather tend to intensify the characters and (6) Blue Stockings and Tupperware Aesthetics
attributions of gender than to neutralize them: giant Looking at the majority of websites devoted to feminist
blown up muscles for the men, enormous breasts for the issues, in the first instance we will find a lot of them
women, flowers wherever female consciousness appears following what I already described as the traditional
on the matrix. practices of first and second wave feminist movement.
However plain and unpretentious the design of a site,
Where old fashioned images won't cease to claim their there will be at least the good old Venus' Mirror as a sign
power, desire for diffence has to look for other paths. In to show the project's orientation, others will use the
this situation, another notion near at hand to discuss is colour purple to design their letters, some even do not
the concept of hybridity, itself founded on the idea of hesitate to use a floral patterns for their backgrounds and
difference rather than of identity: the longig for breaks frames. And of course there is the traditional way of label-
and displacements of meaning, undefinite moments and ing, by calling the projects after big names from
oscillations that come into being when traditions and women's history, be it mythological as Artemis,
significants are being shifted. Correspondingly, Donna Ariadne, Electra, be it historic like the zine Blue
Haraway characterized her Cyborg - a hybrid being her- Stockings refering to suffragette's movement or just sim-
self - as an ardent adherent of partiality, irony, intimacy ply by naming the public: WWWomen, lesbian.org
and perversion" . Following that, we may conclude that and so on. No doubt this politics of definition makes
the potential of a Cyberfeminist figuration - and here I sense in a world wide business center, where you want
am coming back to any kind of public image, be it a logo, to place and distribute your offers by using a clear con-
a corporate identity or a screendesign - could be based cept for sales promotion - but thinking of Cyberfeminist
on a strategy of difference and hybridity. Or, if we strategies as mentioned before we will still look for
prefer to speak in terms of visual representation (as something different. Given the fact that there are lots of
Judith Halberstam proposes it in reference to Judith projects calling themselves not only feminist, but
Butler) as a strategy of masquerade that maybe the only Cyberfeminist, this group will be our field of research.
option to outline different images and different
visions of possible alliances of women and technology. Indeed, browsing through the variety of Cyberfeminist
A masquerade of course, that we will have to examine activities from personal homepages to those run by
again and again with the same questions Butler already groups and associations, from e-zines to artistic pro-
posed in context with her comments on Gender Trouble: jects,there's no question that the range of webdesigns
is being broadened significantly - but yet the impression
Is masquerade following from female desire that had to will remain that in sum there are common features as
be masked and therefore been changed into a defect now well, allowing us to continue our reflections about how
being urged to come to light somehow? Or does it -just Cyberfeminist aesthetics and Cyberfeminist politics might
the contrary - follow from denying that defect, thereby correlate. And of course, we will also have to ask in this
trying to give the impression of being the phallus? Is femi- context, how far the practice correlates with the stra-
ninity being constructed by masquerade as a reflection tegies projected and claimed in Cyberfeminist theory. For
of the phallus to veil the bisexual possibilities that other- example, regarding the fact that representations of femi-
wise would disturb the construction of heterosexual ninity on the web are widely dominated by the male
womanliness? Or is masquerade transforming aggression gaze (be it to sell pornography, be it to sell technology
and anxiety of revenge into seduction and flirtation, as as toys for boys) it is no wonder this is also an issue for
Joan Riviere puts it? Is masquerade at first a means to Cyberfeminist activities longing for a practice of

17
 difference. But at the same time, we will have to bear http://www.geek-girl.com/
in mind that working on this issue means to get into the
complex of representation, body and gender politics - Manga Pop: Spidergirl
where difference is always in danger of being confused http://www.yo.rim.or.jp/~ari/
with and mistaken as the other, a perspective from 4. Tupperware Aesthetics
which any visual notion of women will be an image - Pin ups in pastel: RiotGrrls
mirroring traditional points of view. http://www.riotgrrl.com/
First of all, a really remarkable part of Cyberfeminist - Happy housewifes: Die Hausfrauenseite
iconography refers to an already existing pool of images http://www.hausfrauenseite.de/
of strong and liberated women, i. e. the cross- - Tupperware techno: Friendly Girls Guide
dressing vamps of the roaring twenties, the super- http://www.youth.nsw.gov.au/rob.upload/friendly/index.html
women known from comic strips like Superwoman, 5. Tech Babes
Spiderwoman or Hellcat, the sexy biker bitches and - Tech babes from Metropolis: f-e-mail
supervixen pin ups invented by the sixties, up to the http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/f-e-mail/
angry grrls of nowadays rriot grrl movement - in short: - Do the Cyborg: Victoria Vesnas Bodies inc.
in the majority stereotypes of liberated women that still http://arts.ucsb.edu/~vesna/
bear a lot of sex appeal as well. And regarding the web- http://arts.ucsb.edu/bodiesinc/
design itself, it is also remarkable that quite a lot of - Rather temperate: the real Techbabes
them - if not addicted to the current fashion of techno- http://www.techbabes.com/
pop imagery with brilliant colours and psychedelic back- 6. Superfemmes
ground patterns - tend to prefer pastels to create a new - Belle Silhouette: Amazon.City
tupperware aesthetics. Even if the Cyberfeminist house- http://www.amazoncity.com/
wife no longer deals with household technology only, the - LipstickFemmes: SassyFemme
GeekGirl operator girl is no longer surrounded with http://www.txdirect.net/~sassyfem/mainpage.html
phones and wires, but with motherboards and chips, 7. Wombs und Vaginae Dentatae
even if some of the SuperGrrls wear intellectual glasses - Entrance to the female space: yOni Gateway
and even if the All men must die!- homepage threa- http://www.yoni.com/
tens the surfers with blood red weapons of all kind: In - Heavy Metal Vagina Dentata:Womb
the end, all these images refer to a repertoire of one http://womb.wwdc.com/
dimensional images of femininity - and we will have to 8. Men haters und Bad Bitches
consult them carefully again and again to ask in what way - Hot hearts cold as ice: Heartless Bitches
the intended shifts and breaks support a different notion http://www.heartless-bitches.com/
of female identity and are appropriate to undermine - Even more bloody: All Men Must Die!
rather than to confirm the traditional stereotypes of gen- http://www.kfs.org/~kashka/ammd.html
der. 9. Ambitious bitches and disgusting girls
- Marita Liaula: Ambitious Bitch
Appendix: A Cyberfeminist iconology in short http://www.edita.fi/kustannus/bitch/index.html
1. the colour purple: old fashioned confessions? http://www.edita.fi/kustannus/bitch/destdive.html
Venus' mirror and the colour purple as we know them from - Mare Tralla: Disgusting Girl
the history of feminist movement, name spaces with http://www.artun.ee/homepages/mare/kmm.html
reference to godesses and heroines: constituting elements http://www.wmin.ac.uk/~ghmlc/mina.htm
for the feminist rather than the Cyberfeminist design. 10. Cyberfeminist Spaces and Bodily Architectures
- Godesses wear the colour purple:Electra and Ariadne - Cyberfeminist Universe: VNS Matrix
http://www.electrapages.com/ http://sysx.apana.org.au/artists/vns/
http://www.onb.ac.at/ben/ariadfr.htm http://sysx.apana.org.au/artists/vns/manifesto.html
- Venus' mirrors all over: From WOWWOmen to http://sysx.apana.org.au/artists/vns/spiral.html
Lesbian.Org http://sysx.apana.org.au/artists/vns/themepark.html
http://www.wowwomen.com/ http://sysx.apana.org.au/artists/vns/game.html
http://www.womenz.net.au/ http://sysx.apana.org.au/artists/vns/gashgirl/
http://www.ceiberweiber.com/home.htm http://sysx.apana.org.au/~gashgirl/doll/dollyoko.html
http://www.lesbian.org/index.html http://sysx.apana.org.au/~gashgirl/doll/yukiko.htm
- Images from the roaring twenties: Isle of Lesbos and - Enter via Hymen: Womenhouse
Webgrrls Deutschland http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/womenhouse/
http://www.sappho.com/ http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/womenhouse/html_s/jones-1.html
http://www.webgrrls.de/ http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/womenhouse/html_s/hymen.html
2. Here comes the next generation: gurls 'n' grrls... http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/womenhouse/html_s/wilding1.html
- Suzie Pop goes Techno: gURL and GeekGirl - Coded Body: Eva Wohlgemuth EvaSys
http://www.gurl.com/ http://www.thing.at/bodyscan/
http://206.251.6.116/index.html 11. Radical Cyberfeminism
http://206.251.6.116/geekgirl/010con/backish.html - Already Cyberfeminist history: Akke Wagenaar Radical
- picturebook Grrlisms: Grrl! PlayGirls
http://www.grrl.com/Home.html or http://err.org/akke/RadikalPlaygirls/index.html
http://www.grrl.com/ (sorry, this site doesnt exist anymore)
- Masks and masquerades: Womyn & grrls 12. Rendez-vous des amies
http://exo.com/~emily/feminist.html - Kitchen Talks: Eva Wohlgemuth/Kathy Rae Huffman
3. Superwomen and the Like Face settings
- CyberGrrl Classics: The Universe of Planet Cybergrrl http://thing.at/face/
http://www.cybergrrl.com/ - Cyberfeminist Gallery: Kathy Rae Huffman DarLinks
http://www.cybergrrl.com/planet/ http://www.aec.at/accu/tube.html
http://www.webgrrls.com/ - The truth about Cyberfeminism: Old Boys Network
- SuperGrrl with glasses: GeekDashGirl http://www.obn.org

18
Marina Grzinic
CYBERBODIES
OR STORIES aBOUT THE POLITICaL NETSPaCE

11 THESIS for an oppositional reformulation of the body and the Internet/space

1. To understand the representation and articuation of the 8. What is happening on the Internet is increasingly seen
body in new media and Cyberspace and the the body and utilised as the new public space. The Internet and
immersed in the specific totalitarian/ Eastern Europe's World Wide Web are becoming the space which is not
Socialism and Communism/ or democratic context, we only parallel to the public one, but is increasingly sub-
must first of all decode the intersection of cultural, poli- stituting it. It is the gradual process of substituting the
tical and theoretical strategies lying beneath such repre- 'res publica' with random information, and public
sentation, both of the body and the space of the Internet. opinion with communication. 'So called' public opinion
is being formulated via the Internet and is perhaps sub-
2. We can talk of the common heritage of totalitarianism, stituting the actual.
as we talk of the common platform of (European)
democracy. I propose to reflect on Communism as an 9. Every day the Internet and the WWW seems to come
oppositional, differential setting, and to do the same closer to attaining the position of the prime media and
with the body. ideological communication force of the 'so called' new
world order named post-democracy. "Post-democracy is
3. Today Communism is being commodified for con- a system in which democracy is thought of as a simple
sumption and this is part of the process of circulation of conjunction between a state of the social (democratic
cultural stereotypes. It seems that Communism was the 'individualism', and so forth) and constitutional forms."
'lingua franca' and yet for those of us coming from the (in 'Post-democracy, Politics and Philosophy', an interview
'so called' Eastern European context, it is loosing it's sta- with Jacques Ranciere', Angelaki, 1 : 3, London 1994.)
tus of 'lingua materna'. Ironically, Communism and it's big
brother Socialism were developed as clear patriarchal 10. A case (In the beginning of 1997 the opposition for-
systems. ces and students protested in Belgrade because the
party in power (lead by Slobodan Milosevic) refused to
4. The body today is like nature, a commonplace and recognize the victory of the opposition forces in the city
powerful discursive construction. The body is a topos and elections of Belgrade. The first hand information trans-
a tropos, a figure, construction, artifact, movement, dis- mitted first via e-mails and than spread through the
placement. What is important is to determine to what WWW, but without additional analysis and reflection (i.e.
scope are the representational politics of the about what is really going on in Belgrade and who is all
body/space/Internet used in the past and present. taking part in the protests) seemed to be enough to lead
some of the inhabitants of the WWW to proclaim that
5. We have to approach the duality of the body and the they were also taking part in the 'Serbian' revolution
Cyberspace as part of a larger system of visual and because they were obtaining first hand and eye witness
representational communication, as both a conduit and information through the web. The community on the web
an agent of ideologies, as a sign system which contains and its opinion were the sum total of read and forwar-
a contingence of visual and signifying codes which in turn ded messages and informations obtained on the Internet.
determine reception and instrumentality.
11. A demand (An important question today concerning
6. The aesthetics and politics of the body/ and the Internet the Internet is to identify (following the decade of the fall
space is (if we refer to Victor Burgin) fundamentally con- of the Berlin wall) who are the old and new actors in the
cerned with the articulation of representational politics. construction of this 'Brave New World', which is pos-
sible to rename as the 'World Wide Web', and also who
7. We need to reconsider both the public space and the and how is allowed develop a criticism of the Internet /The
new media space as ideological, and as well their pro- case od the Kosovo'Albanians reports on the net/.
cesses of transformation. This mise-en-scene of the
space can be viewed in today's terms as ideological,
precisely because it is so invisible and taken for granted.
We have to ask ourselves, in the manner of Fredric
Jameson: what space?

19
 Faith Wilding and CAE (Critical Art Ensemble)

Notes on the Political Condition of

Cyberfeminism
Cyberfeminism is a promising new wave of (post)feminist thin- the means of financial independence-a struggle that continues
king and practice. Through the work of numerous Netactive in the third phase of feminist practice. On the more traditional
women, there is now a distinct cyberfeminist Netpresence end of the struggle, domestic space was no longer perceived
that is fresh, brash, smart, and iconoclastic of many of the tenets as a totalizing feminine space, but was re-presented as a
of classical feminism. At the same time, cyberfeminism has only space of ambiguity with both celebratory and exploitive cha-
taken its first steps in contesting technologically complex terri- racteristics. On the political front, feminism focused on liberation
tories. To complicate matters further, these new territories practices, and left the old right wing practices behind, such as
have been overcoded to a mythic degree as a male domain. temperance movements.
Consequently, cyberfeminist incursion into various techno-
worlds (CD-ROM production, Web works, lists and news groups, The third wave of feminisms (cultural-, eco-, theoretical-, sex
artificial intelligence, etc.) has been largely nomadic, sponta- positive-, lesbian-, anti-porn-, multicultural-, etc.)--often collec-
neous, and anarchic. On the one hand, these qualities have tively dubbed Postfeminism--continues to use these models of
allowed maximum freedom for diverse manifestations, experi- public action and rebellion. A recent case in point was the short-
ments, and the beginnings of various written and artistic lived but highly visibleWomen's Action Coalition (WAC) that
genres. On the other, networks and organizations seem some- began in New York in late l991, following a series of events that
what lacking, and the theoretical issues of gender regarding the enraged women in the US: The dramatic, nationally televised
techno-social are immature relative to their development in spa- Hill/Thomas hearings; the William Kennedy Smith and Mike
ces of greater gender equity won through struggle. Given such Tyson rape trials; and the judicial battles over abortion rights:
conditions, some feminist strategies and tactics will repeat all these contributed to a sense that it was time for women to
themselves as women attempt to establish a foothold in a launch a "visible and remarkable resistance" to social, sexual,
territory traditionally denied to them. This repetition should not economic, and political oppression and violence. WAC quick-
be considered with the usual yawn of boredom whenever the ly became a media attractor as it launched action after visible
familiar appears, as cyberspace is a crucial point of gender action. WAC produced a spectacle that was hip, sexy, cool, fun,
struggle that is desperately in need of gender diversification outrageous, and visible. Eight thousand women joined in the
(and diversity in general). first year, and chapters sprang up around the US and in Canada.
Much of this initial success was due to the highly effective com-
The Feminist Cycle munication and networking system that WAC immediately
One aspect immediately evident is that the Net provides cyber- organized. Central to this system was a phone tree, combined
feminists with a vehicle crucially different from anything avail- with adequate access to fax machines, e-mail, and media
able to prior feminist waves. Historically, feminist activism contacts. In a sense, WAC was an early proto-electronic femi-
has depended on women getting together bodily--in kitchens, nist organization. Having motivated and organized so many
churches, assembly halls, and in the streets. The organizing cell women, WAC reinvigorated feminist activism, and, in the US,
for the first phase of feminism was the sewing circle, the quil- led a new wave of contestation in all the traditional feminist
ting group, or the ladies' charity organization. Women met territories. Like most radical organizations, it was only a tem-
together in private to plan their public campaigns for political porary tactical organization. It was unable to survive its rapid
and legal enfranchisement. In these campaigns the visible pre- growth, and all too soon reached critical mass, when explosive
sence of groups of women plucked from the silenced isolation splintering forced it to choose one of two outcomes: purge and
of their homes, became a public sign of female rebellion and bureaucratize, or dissolve. WAC wasn't able to organize its way
activism. Women acting together, speaking in public, marching out of the contradictions of difference, nor was it able to con-
through the streets, and disrupting public life were activities tinue resisting some of the dogmatic tendencies of "main-
that opened up political territories that were traditionally stream" and "security state" feminism which proscribe certain
closed to them. behaviors, beliefs, and lifestyles. While the former option of
purge and bureaucratize was first attempted, the fabric of radi-
During the second wave of feminism, which emerged in the early cality was strong enough that dissolution spontaneously occurred.
sixties, women again started meeting together to plan actions.
They met in consciousness-raising groups that became the The third wave (with a few exceptions) has missed moving into
organizing cells for a revived feminist movement. This time, femi- one crucial area, however, and that was the revolution in com-
nists began to master a new tactic: Creating counter-spec- munications and information technology. Cyberfeminism repre-
tacle in the media. Women staged actions targeted at highly sents a new set of explorers ready to move the struggle into
visible public icons. Such patriarchal monuments under femi- this new territory. As yet, the movement is still too young to
nist assault in the US movement included the Miss America face struggles inherent in the economy of difference. As on most
Pageant, Playboy offices and clubs, Wall Street, the Metropolitan frontiers, there still *seems* to be room for everyone. At the
Museum of Art, the Pentagon, and the White House. Everywhere same time, there are lessons to be learned from history. Radical
the actions occurred, the news media was there to document movements in their infancy tend to return to past patterns.
outrageous female misbehavior. These tactics spread the news Cyberfeminism is no different, and key feminist issues such as
of growing feminism nationally and internationally. Visible feminine subjectivity, separatism and boundary maintenance,
female disruption and subversion also provided images of and territorial identification are bound to arise again, even if
female empowerment that inspired many women (and men) to they seem dead in other feminist territories.
begin taking direct autonomous action on behalf of the rights
of women. Territorial Identification
What is the territory that cyberfeminism is questioning, theo-
If the first wave was marked by women's incursion into new rizing, and actively confronting? The surface answer is, of cour-
political territories, this second wave was marked by a march se, cyberspace, but such an answer is not really satisfying.
into new economic territories and by a reconfiguration of fami- Cyberspace is but one small part, since the infrastructure that
liar ones. Most significant was women's demand for access to produces this virtual world is so vast. Hardware and software

20
design and manufacture are certainly of key importance, and accomplish, but throw in the condition of gender isolation
perhaps most significant of all are the institutions that train those (learning and working in a male domain) and the generally
who design the products of cyber-life. Overwhelmingly, these negative social representation of being a geek girl (i.e., going
products are designed by males for business or military ope- against the grain of female construction) and it becomes imme-
rations. Clearly these are still primarily male domains (i.e., diately apparent that alienation levels are extremely high.
men are the policy makers) in which men have the buying Under such conditions, as in the past, separatist activity has
power, and so the products are designed to meet their needs been a useful tactic, as well as one that can foster efficient
or to play on their desires. From the beginning, entrance into pedagogical situations.
this high-end techno-world (the virtual class) has been skewed
in favor of males.* In early socialization/education, technology Kathy Huffman often jokes that "in cyberspace men can't inter-
and technological process are gendered as male domains. rupt you [women]." The joke is funny because it does represent
When females manipulate complex technology in a productive a truth of gendered interruption; however, the pessimistic side
or creative manner, it is viewed and treated as a deviant act of this point is that women are interrupted in cyberspace. They
that deserves punishment. are often overwhelmed with counter-discourse, ignored, or
totalized under the sign of being "politically correct." A remark
This is not to say that women do not use complex technology. by a woman may not be interrupted, but continuity of dis-
Women are an important consumer market, and help maintain course, with particular regard to women's issues, is often inter-
the status quo when the technology is used in a passive rupted. Here again there is a need for separatist activities at
manner. For example, most institutions of commerce or govern- this point in post/feminist decolonization of cyberspace. During
ment are all too happy to give women computers, e-mail this early stage of development, women need to experiment
accounts, and so on if it will make them better bureaucrats. This in developing their own working and learning spaces. This
is why the increased presence of women on the Net is not kind of activity has occurred in all phases of feminists territorial
solely a positive indication of equality. It is a very similar situ- decolonization, and has shown itself to be very productive.
ation to late 50s/early 60s America when middle-class husbands Separatism should be welcome among cyberfeminists and
were more than happy to buy a second car for their wives--as among those who support a cyberspace of difference. It should
long as it made them more efficient domestic workers. be remembered that separatism among a minoritarian (disen-
Technology in this case was used to deepen the confinement franchised) group is not negative. It's not sexist, it's not racist,
of women within their situation rather than liberate them from and it's not even necessarily a hindrance to democratic deve-
it. (As a general rule, anything you get without struggle should lopment. There is a distinct difference between using exclusi-
be viewed with intense skepticism). The technology and tech- vity as part of a strategy to make a specific perception or way
nological processes to which women currently have access are of being in the world a universal, and using exclusivity as a
the consequence of structural economic necessity. However, all means to escape a false universal (one goal of cyberfeminist
we need is a shift in consciousness to begin the subversion of separatism). There is also a distinct difference between using
the current gender structure (this is the positve side of so many exclusion as a means to maintain structures of domination, and
women being on-line). using it as a means to undermine them (another goal of cyber-
feminist separatism).
Thus, the territory of cyberfeminism is large. It includes the objec-
tive arenas of cyberspace, institutions of industrial design, At the same time, separatism can reach a point where it is
and institutions of education-that is, those arenas in which tech- counterproductive. The cycle of useful production in regard to
nological process is gendered in a manner that excludes women separatist activity can be traced by the applicability of one of
from access to the empowering points of techno-culture. its main slogans, "The personal is political." In consciousness-
However, the territory does not stop there. Cyberfeminism is raising groups, personal information is typically disclosed.
also a struggle to be increasingly aware of the impact of new Then patterns begin to emerge out of these disclosures. Notions
technologies on the lives of women, and the insidious gende- that were thought to be personal, private, idiosyncratic, and psy-
ring of technoculture in everyday life. Cyberspace does not chologically bound turn out to be points of group knowledge and
exist in a vacuum; it is intimately connected to numerous real- represent sociological tendencies. Group members come to
world institutions and systems that thrive on gender separa- realize that their "individual" problems are only mirrors of soci-
tion and hierarchy. Finally, cyberfeminism must radically expand al pathologies that affect all the people of a given class, race,
the critique concerning the media hype about the "techno- gender, etc. In turn, each individual comes to realize that it is
world." While the utopian cyber-spectacle has been adequa- not a personal flaw that led he/r to be in an unacceptable
tely deflated by documentation of its abuse of the bureaucra- socio-economic situation, but that the structure of the politi-
tic class, low-end technocratic class, and workers involved in cal economy is to blame. In order for this process to succeed,
product manufacturing, this critique, in terms of gender and race, there must be a solidarity of identity, and when oppression is
is very modest. For example, who can possibly believe that age, high, this can only happen in a separatist environment. However,
race, or gender do not matter in cyberspace? The ability to assign once these social currents are discovered and this knowledge
oneself social characteristics online is only an alibi for a very is deployed among the given social group, the need for sepa-
traditional and exploitive division of labor that is representa- ratist activity drops and can even become counterproductive.
tive of the overall system, and a seduction element for those At this point, the uneasy romance between coalition and diver-
whose real-world social environment has been eliminated by sity can begin.
pancapitalism's destruction of social spaces of autonomy. We
must also ask what awaits people in a minoritarian position once For feminism in general, the time for separatist action seems
they are online? Will they find familiar and significant rheto- to be over; however, we must remember that all areas of
rics, discussions, and images? Is there a continuity of dis- society are not equally gendered-some territories are more
course between the real and the virtual (as there is for the white equalized than others. Given that cyberspace is one of the
middle class)? While there are virtual pockets in which conti- most inequitable, it should be expected that a number of early
nuity exists, the overwhelmingly representative situation is feminist organizational and educational tactics will be revived.
geared to the same majoritarian consciousness that is found
in the real-world. In other words, elements of social stratification Feminine Subjectivity
are reflected and replicated in cyberspace. Cyberfeminism is currently at that unfortunate point where it
has to decide who gets to be a separatist cyberfeminist and who
Separatism and Boundary Maintenance does not. The haunting question of "what is a woman?" once
Whenever feminism begins pushing its way into new territo- again returns. In theory, this problem is graspable, but first, what
ries, the avant garde members of the movement face incredible is the problem? Looking back on any feminist movement, there
problems and nearly insurmountable odds. Cyberfeminism is no have always been tremendous conflicts within women's groups
different. Relatively few women have the skills to see through and organizations brought on by attempts to define feminine
the cyber-hype, to understand the complexity of the system, and subjectivity (and thereby, "us" and "them"). In the second wave,
most importantly, to teach other women how to survive and the feminine was defined in a manner that seemed largely to
actively use the system. For most women in the technosphe- reflect the subjectivity of white, middle class, straight women.
re, it takes all their energy simply to survive transgressing the The third wave had to debate whether or not transvestites, trans-
norm and learning massive amounts of dense technical infor- sexuals, and other "males" who claimed to be female identi-
mation. Just doing the latter is a difficult task that few people fied should be accepted into activist organizations (and at the

21
 same time, women of color, working class women, and lesbi- this education needs to be contextualized within a critical
ans all still had grounds for complaints). In addition, it was never feminist analysis and discourse about women, Netculture and
decided how to separate the feminine from other primary politics, and the pancapitalist labor economy. Cyberfeminists
social variables that construct a woman's identity. For exam- need to make their voices heard much more strongly in the dis-
ple, part of the problem in many feminist organizations, and in cussion of Net development. In doing so, cyberfeminism needs
WAC in particular, was that the middle class professional to think about who they consider their constituency. As a cul-
women had the greatest economic and cultural resources. tural and technical avant garde, cyberfeminists need to remem-
They therefore had greater opportunity for leadership and ber that most women who now work with computers and infor-
policy making. The women outside of this class felt that the pro- mation technology in first world countries are at best glorified
fessionals had unfair advantages and that their agenda was the typists, for whom the computer simply represents an intensi-
primary agenda, which in turn brought about a destructive fication of work. The question must be asked: What relation-
form of separation. ship do these women have to technology? How is this relation-
ship produced, and how can it be contested? Cyberfeminism
These are but some of the practical problems that have could provide a consciousness raising site where women can
emerged out of the issue of exclusivity and imperfections inhe- tell stories about their experiences with all the different
rent in definitions. Defining feminine subjectivity can never be aspects of technology, and how it affects their lives. Such a site
done to the satisfation of all, and yet, practically speaking, it could teach women to question the increasing transparency of
has to be done. technological incursion into their workplaces and into everyday
The current theoretical solution to this problem is to have small life. And of course, there must be ongoing education, infor-
alliances and coalitions that do not rely on bureaucratic pro- mation, and activism concerning the feminized "global home-
cess. Such coalitions should be expected to dissolve at various work economy (Haraway)" which is profoundly worsening the
velocities over time. Also, naively humanistic or metaphysical lives of women in developing countries.
principles (depending on one's perspective) like "sisterhood" Feminist education (women's studies) as it was pioneered in
should be left in the past, and we must all learn to live with the US in the early 1970's included the idea that a "separate"
the conflicts and contradictions of a house of difference. Of education, where women would not have to compete with
course, this is easier said than done. Truth changes with the males, and where they would have the freedom to frame
situation. In a territory like a US or British cultural studies issues and ask questions that challenged the hegemony of
department, we can talk about living in a house of difference. received practices and ideas. The Feminist Art Programs in
In other more inequitable territories, it is more difficult, and clear California, for example, maintained their own studios, courses,
boundaries (often essentialized) of differences for identity pur- and teachers within an institutional academic structure. But more
poses are often required. For example, telling a person of color deeply, it also became evident that a separate space allowed
who has just been beaten by the police that "the officers were uncensored and radical experimentation that included the melt-
only reacting to a racist textual construction that links people down of traditional disciplines, practices, and territories of
of color with the sign of criminality" is probably not going to expertise, and that initiated some postmodern art practices that
have much resonance (even though in legitimized academic terri- have changed the face of mainstream art and art history in the
tories the argument is quite convincing). While the simpler US. What might a feminist educational program in computer
explanation, "your ass just got beat because you are a person science and media technology accomplish? Imagine!!
of color" will be quite convincing, because in this case, who is
on what side of the racial divide is unambiguous in the mind Cyberspace lends itself nicely to the creation of separate lear-
of the unwilling participant. In this context, the hard bounda- ning and practice spaces for different groups, and it seems fruit-
ries of essentialism make sense and have greater explanatory ful to expand and maintain these spaces for now in the spirit
power until the ambiguity that emerges out of successful con- of feminist self-help. One of the most important educational tools
sciousness raising and contestation becomes a part of everyday cyberfeminists can offer is an ongoing directory of electronic
life. Consequently, one can expect that essentialized notions strategies and resources for women, including feminist
of the feminine will continue to appear and find acceptance. theory discussion groups, electronic publishing and exhibition
venues, zines, addresses, bibliographies, mediaographies, how-
Dinner Parties to sites, and general information exchange. While compilati-
Cyberfeminism is currently drawing upon social and cultural stra- ons of these resources are already underway, there is a
tegies from past waves of feminism. For example, dinner par- growing need for a more radical and critical feminist discourse
ties that celebrate women's achievements and serve as con- about technology in cyberspace (as opposed to discourse in cri-
vivial coalition building events are a famous part of feminist tical and media studies departments in universities). In cyber-
history, as witnessed not only in the fundraising dinner parties feminism, this discourse arises directly from actual current
held by female suffragists, but also in Judy Chicago's Dinner practices and problems, rather than from abstract theorizing.
Party; in Suzanne Lacy's art/life performances; in Mary Beth Thus cyberfeminism offers the development of applied, activist
Edelson's "Last Supper" detournement; and in the countless theory.
feasts prepared and served to each other by feminists all over
the world in the past decades. In recognition that women need An obvious group to target for cyberfeminist networking, edu-
to feed each other and desire conviviality, Kathy Huffman and cation, and expertise is the first generations of young women
Eva Wohlgemuth in their Web project, "Face Settings," are now graduating from schools and colleges (mainly in the US and
using the medium of the dinner party as an organizing and edu- Europe) who have had some training in electronic media and
cational tool for cyberfeminists. The events--which often in media theory. Having already begun to work in electronic
happen during international media festivals and symposia media in school, many of these young women will be searching
where men are the leading actors--are meant to overcome the for ways to get electronically connected, and thus will experi-
isolation of cyberculture, to get women connected to each ence in full force the gender whammy of cyberspace. While
other, and to help them begin to learn and use electronic tech- many of them have had some exposure to feminist theory and
nology in producing their own work. It has been shown that for- practice in the academy, most of them will be faced with a terri-
ming strong working groups among people who only commu- fying void when it comes to feminist support and access in cyber-
nicate virtually is far less productive than forming groups space. Since cyberspace seems to attract younger women, it
among people who also meet in the flesh. For this reason, it is is important that cyberfeminists develop projects and sites for
important for cyberfeminist to make opportunities to meet purposes of recruitment.
together bodily and form affinity groups to facilitate building
a transnational, transcultural movement. And what better way Cyberfeminist Body Art
than a dinner party to dissolve the estrangement so often pro- Bodies generally are all the rage on the Net--whether they are obso-
duced by even the friendliest online communications? Indeed, lete, cyborg, techno, porno, erotic, morphed, recombined, phan-
the virtual medium must not replace the affective and the affi- tom, or viral. But most of these "bodies" are little more than recir-
nity-building functions of presence. culated commodified images of sexuality (particularly female and
"deviant" sexuality) or medical imaging (such as the infamous
Cyberfeminist Education Visible Human project), and are presented uncritically. Many
Cyberfeminists have already grasped the importance of making artists are contributing to an explosion of body art on the Net, much
hands-on technological education for women a core priority. But of it simply a transposition of what already exists in other media.

22
Cyberfeminist body-centered art is coming alive on the Net. As intimate ties to cultural position and race. As this group helps
to be expected, the vagina and the clitoris have pride of place open the borders to other disenfranchised groups, it must be
in much cyberfeminist work such as that of VNS Matrix. "Cunt asked, what kind of ideology and structure will await the new-
art" was a fiercely joyous, liberatory, and radical rallying icon comers? Will it be a repetition of the first and second waves
for feminist artists and activists in the 1970s. Women's of feminism in political and economic arenas? Will cyberspace
consciousness-raising and medical self-help groups regularly and its associate institutions be able to cope with a house of
examined each others' genitals and reproductive organs, and difference? Knowing and understanding the history of women's
the speculum became the symbol not only of sexual liberation, struggle (along with other struggles in race relations and class
but also of feminist demands for reproductive freedom and for relations) is essential--not just as a resource for strategies
a woman-centered health-care system. As Donna Haraway and tactics, not just so tactical responses to cybergender
suggests in _Modest Witness_, feminists interrogating techno- issues can be improved, but also to see that the new gender
science (and particularly the new reproductive technologies), constructions that come to mark the entirety of this new terri-
need to arm themselves with "the right speculum for the job," tory (not just virtual domains) do not fall into the same cycle
one that "makes visible the data structures that are our bodies." as in the past.
The visualization and data-gathering engines that drive both the
new information and reproductive technologies can be redirected Consider this example. In the US, third-wave *activity* peaked
and applied to the task of "designing the analytical languages in 1991. Barely three years later, this visible resistance had again
[the speculums] for representing and intervening in our spliced, died down, leaving continuing debates about feminism large-
cyborg worlds" (Haraway, p. 212). ly to the academy. In l997, federal "welfare" laws were repea-
led in an all-out assault on the public safety net for the poor.
Cyberfeminism can create reconfigured networked bodies in At the same time, forced labor through "workfare" and prison
cyberspace, bodies that are passionately incorporated in tex- programs has begun to intensify, and the expansion of the
tual, visual, and interactive works. Simultaneously, decon- feminized global electronic homework economy has produced
structive projects that address the proliferation of dominant a new wave of sweatshop labor. Since these initiatives have
cultural, gender, and sexual codes on the Net will be more effec- a dramatic effect on poor and working-class women, one would
tive if they come from a strong, libidinal center, and are under- think that the conditions would be right for a new popular
stood through the filter of women's history. Indeed, cyber- front of feminist activism and resistance. However, the social
feminist body art projects are haunted by women's bodily body and public life seem so splintered, alienated, stratified,
histories. They are often motivated by rage against the forces and distracted by market economy, that as yet no signs of such
of censorship, repression, and normalization. Primarily, though, activism have appeared. Is this problem partly that the avant
they are motivated by absence--the absence created by female garde has been paid off to the extent that the issues of the poor
infanticide, clitoridectomy, anorgasmic medications, suttee, which do not effect its members are no cause for action? Is this
footbinding, enforced celibacy, sexual misinformation, lack of problem repeating itself in cyberspace and in its manufactu-
birth control information, rape, forced pregnancy, and by female re? There are so many more problems to face than just access
restriction and confinement. for all.
Part of theoretical feminism's project has been to explore the Notes
possibility of difference in female sexuality and desire. Much * Just so the authors' position is clear: We do not support a
French and American feminist, literary, and psychoanalytic reductive equality feminism, i.e., support the existing system,
theory in the 1980s was dedicated to this research. The Net but believe there should be equal gender representation in all
offers possibilities for exploring these questions in a new its territories. We do not support pancapitalism. It is a preda-
technological and information setting, and among a new popu- tory, pernicious, and sexist system that will not change even
lation of author/producers who are more grounded in practice if there was equal representation of gender in the policy making
than in theory. Although this line of research seems to have left classes. Our argument here is that women need access to
the binary of woman/nature far behind, it is by no means empowering knowledge and tools which are now dominated
certain that it will not fall into some of the traps of essentia- by a despicable "virtual class (Kroker)." We do not mean to sug-
list feminism, or succumb to the lure of simply countering gest that women become a part of this class. To break the "glass
masculinist Netculture with a feminine Netpornography. There ceiling" and become an active part of the exploiting class that
is much to be gained from consciously interpolating women's benefits from gender hierarchy is not a feminist goal, nor any-
histories and bodies into cyberspace; much can be learned thing to be proud of.
from naming the absences, and beginning to create a multi-
faceted, fluid, and conscious feminist presence. **In her essay, "The Future Looms: Weaving Women and
Conclusion Cybernetics," Sadie Plant spins a mythical genesis for the con-
It seems safe to say that cyberfeminism is still in its avant-garde vergence of women and machines in a feminised cybernetics
phase of development. The first wave of explorers, amazons, based on women's ancient invention of the craft of weaving.
and "misfits" have wandered into what is generally a hostile This convergence "is reinforced by cyberfeminism... a per-
territory, and found a new land in need of decolonization. spective (which) is received from the future." In the 70's crea-
History is repeating itself in a positive cycle, where feminist ting a female mythology was an inspiring and necessary part
avant-garde philosophies, strategies, and tactics from the past of recovering and writing the histories of women, and of hono-
can be dusted off and reclaim their former vitality. Separatist ring female cultural inventions and female generativity (the
activities in the real or virutal forms of dinners, discussion Matrix). Cyberfeminist mythologizing is a welcome sign of
groups, and consciousness raising sessions are viable once inspiration and empowerment, and at this point in time, makes
again. Essentialist philosophies enacted in body art, cunt art, good tactical sense. Such work offers a clear explanation of a
and identity maintenance recombine with constructionist noti- constructive relationship between women and technology, and
ons of identity development. An epistemological and ontolo- it begins the process of rewriting the gender code of cyberspace.
gical anarchy that is celebratory and open to any possibility is However, in a political sense, the function of the mythic "natu-
threading its way through cyberfeminism. The dogma has yet ral woman" has its limits. In this case, it seems just as likely
to solidify. At the same time, the territory is a hostile one, that weaving was a woefully boring task that was forced upon
since the gold of the information age will not be handed over the disenfranchised. (This trend of boring and alienating work
to women without a struggle. To make matters worse, a big toll- as a the domain of the disempowered is certainly repeating its-
booth guards access to this new territory. Its function is to collect elf in the pancapitalist technocracy.) As cyberfeminist critique
tribute from every entity--individual, class, or nation, that tries increases in complexity, and therefore in ambiguity, the current
to enter. Entrance for individuals comes at the price of obtai- cyberfeminist mythology will have to fade away much as matri-
ning education, hardware and software; entrance for nations archal Crete and cunt iconography did in the late 70s.
comes at the price of having acceptable infrastructure, and to
a lesser extent, an acceptable ideology. Consequently, a more
negative cycle is also repeating itself, as the women who have
found their way into cyberterritories are generally those who
have economic and cultural advantages in other territories;
these advantages are awarded through class position, with its

23
 Claudia Reiche

Feminism is digital

Documentary I apologize for this very private anecdote, but would like
to dedicate it to the work of Helene von Oldenburg,
Id like to start with a true story. My personal and true showing a basic attraction to the hairs on my legs.
story about the documenta, from when I was still a very
young girl. Must have been 17. Normally I never tell per- Riddle
sonal or true stories, but in english it may be possible. I
have to admit, this is a rather private story. I never really found a solution for my riddle. And lived
Okay one night, late at night, I was watching television through different opinions on that question Where -- the
with the sound turned very low so as not to wake up my hell -- is the <woman> in this story? -- during the last
parents already sleeping in their beds beside. It was a twenty years. Today I shall try to show the different
black and white documentation on the actual documen- aspects and possibilities of this riddle with emphasis on
ta, I think in 1978. My eyes became bigger and bigger, the idea: that the woman is perhaps -- under certain cir-
my mouth stood open, I began to sweat and was com- cumstances -- in the changing lights of the TV-set itself.
pletely excited. Very quiet. This was it, this was what I Nowadays and here at the 1st Cyberfeminist International
had been looking for. What I saw was coming from a free- I think we can enlarge this vision, so that the woman could
dom which I knew, I had to join. And I truly believed that be found when we look at the strange reality of the
this fantastic art at this documenta would change the changing lights of our everyday computer-displays. The
ways of feeling, of thinking, of living, would completely ons and offs so many times per second escaping our
change all ideas and ideologies. At least all the habitu- vision.
des in everyday-life, for everybody who had once noti-
ced these art works -- which I was going to see at TV just Now what can I say? I have to finally make a beginning.
in that moment.. Its bizarre, I do not recall any artist or There are two theses Id like to present:
work. Except one: Charlotte Moormann playing naked on 1. The sexual difference is visible.
a cello. That was great: being naked, making music, 2. The sexual difference is invisible.
making videopictures and circuits of images. And I knew: You may find this amazing or even contradictory, but I still
My destiny: this was it, I would have to do something like hope to achieve your agreement that these two theses
that. And suddenly, I really didnt know why, I started to do not necessarily exclude one another. I will cite some
put up my trousers legs. (In the fashion of the seventies discussions and theorists, some graphics and filmstills,
this was easy to do.) I put them higher and higher and as well as some experiements on perception. I shall call
moved closer and closer to the changing light of the to help for my changing perspectives on these crucial
images on the TV-screen, and looked very very closely at points of feminism itself: the glance and the difference.
my legs. Somehow like a scientist (which I should beco- The glance and the difference might sound like a silly
me later), with growing delight. And what I examined in rather arbitrary combination, something like the shiny
http://www.thealit.dsn.de

this way were the hairs on my legs. It was gorgeous. apple and algebra or eyes and the presentiment of
Because quite suddenly I had plenty of it. Dark brown hairs death, or a babys smile and the neuronal activity of the
on my legs, even over my knees. And believe me: I never brain etc. But we shall look for a <missing link> between
was lovlier. I felt this had to stay, I simply was ready for these two terms, difficult to formulate with words and
a real change in my life. And so: still watching Charlotte images. Sometimes this seems to me like the <missing>
Moorman, perhaps wrapped now in plastic foils and tied par exellence. So I will try. This will be my subject.
up with strings around her body, still playing the violon-
cello, all this had to produce one question. A riddle: Now Strange Glanz
for you as well -- its your turn:Where -- the hell -- is
the woman in this story? Is it in this wrapped and Hmm, wait a moment, I just remember a strange story
naked lady? Is it in the violoncello, making all the sounds, about the <glance>. As part of a case study from the
while being played on? Is it in the lights of the TV set, beginning of this century which still fascinates me. It con-
fascinating millions of people all over the world, in that cerns a transfer from english to german as well as from
very moment? Or is it in my hairs? words to images. Its the theoretical figure of a cross, or
probably the doublecrossing a patient can play with him-

24
self or his analysts, or a writer like Freud could play with blematic answer has to be: A picture is data. And data
his readers, referring to passages of his writings as consist of what? Of <pure> differences. Nothing but dif-
<theoretical fictions> a strategy Id like to adopt in order ferences. And so my slide can be called timeless as
to follow my true storytelling on the theoretical plane. well. At least in the freudian sense, when he describes
So: Do you know the anecdote Sigmund Freud tells to the unconscious as timeless. By the way there are some
open his article on Fetishism? Its about the Glanz parallels known between the electricity in the integra-
(shine) on the nose of certain female persons, which ted circuits in a computer and the electricity of the neu-
was a patients exclusive condition for his sexual plea- ral activity in the brain.
sure. Nobody else could see this Glanz. The strange
story behind this fact is hidden in the english word My slide with the <0> and the <1> illustrates the simple
<glance> which the german patient must have heard idea of a difference. You may think of the flow of elec-
from his english nurse before he completely forgot this tricity in a closed circuit or non-flowing electricity, if the
language of his early age. Freud concluded that the fetish circuit has been interrupted. It is one or the other: <0>
must be a <Penisersatz>, but not any old penis, but a spe- or <1>, as these numbers do in fact represent as well
cial one. The one belonging to his mother, normally dis- something you can identify. That is: Two identities. Two
appearing in later years, but in this case still faithfully informations. Two bits. Binary digits.
adored. Its clear to see, we have reached a zone, where My slide illustrates a difference: Like between two sexes.
visibilities or invisiblities cant be clearly differenciated, Please think of the binary sexes.
a sort of pictorial magic, able to produce hallucinatory
effects, especially the fascinosum of pictures. Did you Concerning the identification of a subject, its gender,
know that the latin word <fascinum> means <penis>? The which will have been founded on pictorial perceptions ,
pictorial illusion par excellence. we can refer to this <pure> difference as well. In every
case a child will have noticed the picture of the other sex,
medial reflection differing from its own reflected image in a mirror. But -
there is a hook and there is an eye. The hook is the
So I can repeat my theses now: 1. The sexual differen- picture, formed by the astonishing fact that a dif-
ce is visible. 2. The sexual difference is invisible. ference will be perceived by a glance at the form
If both shall be in operation, something emerges, which of a picture. Please have a look at
has to be named a problem, but in the logical, not the tra- my slide again.
gic meaning of the word. First I shall come to thesis
number 1: The sexual difference is visible. If you dont No equalivalence, as may be sugge-
mind Id like to start with an illustration of the visibility sted by my chosen picture of two
of the <sexual difference>. Id like to stimulate an pic- ciphers can be found concerning gen-
torial imagination by this sight -- that calls the female and der, in a society which priviliges the
male sexual organs before your <inner eye>. Please will glance, where the psychic structu-
you all shut your eyes now! And already imagine this dif- ring of the infant is triggered by the
ference. There wont be very much to say after youll have glance and pictorial phenomena. After
seen it on my slide in a second, because -- as always -- the birth it is examined if it is there
looking at a picture tends to swallow the words. Especially or not, the male organ. Yes or no,
this sort of picture. Please open your eyes now. related to a pictorial phenomenon.

I hope you noticed that a tiny but fun-

damental shift has taken place in my
phrases. The ciphers are in this sense now connected to
the male and the female identity. At the left you would
now find the female, at the right the male.

Defined values are from this point of view related to the

ciphers. (Or did anybody already identify the <1> with the
man and the <0> with the woman?) Now it counts only
if there is something to see, and there seems to be
something missing at the right. What makes the
<woman> in this respect? It must be at the same
time a visible and identifiable image of one sex as
a visible absence in this image, that sticks to her image
as the invisible.
For me this seems to be an up-to-date-illustration of a
difference. For it is the state of the art of modern media Did you notice: while describing the female side of this
technologies which makes it simple as well as impossi- slide we just passed over to the second thesis, claiming
ble to answer the old question for the picture. The pro- that the sexual difference is invisible. (As some of you

25
 may have already noticed, nothing here is balanced or demanded to see
symmetrical.) Now: What about this invisibility of the what makes the pro-
<sexual difference>? Personally this seems much more cessus of significa-
interesting to me. Because as I said -- there is a hook and tion. Do I need to
there is an eye and the hook is the picture. The same slide point out that there
can now serve to illustrate this hook and make us see the is nothing more
invisibility of the <sexual difference>. invisible on earth
than a <signi-
According to the shift to be found in the crits of fiant>? Ferdinand de
Jacques Lacan, processing the linguistic turn of psy- Saussure says in the
choanalysis <after Freud>, this unbalanced status of the Cours de lingui-
visible has some extreme consequences for the positi- stique gnrale that
on of the woman in our patriarchal societies, which I think language consists of
we all have experienced. I mean, thinking of the picture differences. If you
of a female sex (the fair sex) it comes out soon that read it literally, he
weve left the sector of visibility (Attention!) and reached says that language, <la langue>, consists not of ideas,
invisibility. Because: What makes this picture so sexy for but of differences between the elements, the <signifi-
us? I suggest: its invisible parts, especially (from my ants>.
point of view) the absence of a penis. Well try to have
a close-up on this, reaching finally the zone of <signifi- Their most precise characteristic lies therein, to be
ants> which seem to be able to produce an exciting something, what the others are not. And to refer again
variety of hallucinatory effects, especially the fascinating to Jacques Lacan, one could say his writings refer to
pictures. nothing but the difference between <signifiants>. These
differences form the structures of language and the
This means: Invisible on the slide would of course alrea- unconscious, and also of pictorial perception. Wanting
dy have been the representation of the so called < pure> to see the image of a difference itself would mean
or <sheer> difference. As always: there must be two wanting to see the impossible image of percepti-
terms to represent, or more precisely: to form a difference. on and the unconscience itself.
A difference cant exist on its own. A difference has
no self. No identity. But somehow we cant think without images. There is a
privilege of the glance, structuring even our abstract
But if now some of you are not convinced already, still means of conception as a pictorial one. This would
desiring to see this difference, nevertheless the sexual explain some impossible desires, for instance this one:
difference, which makes a woman, we may try again. An to see the invisible sexual difference.
additional experiment. Please have a look at this slide
now. Doesnt the desire to see be as strong as the glance
Here I removed the two idendities, in that always misses something? There must be something
order to make the difference appear. necessarily escaping the glance. Following the lacanian
But I think this doesnt really work. anecdotes in his text The mirrors-stage as builder of the
Trying to accept this as an image ego function it must be an essential blindness, structuring
of an absence, we cant help see- our pictorial perception. Blind well have been for the dif-
ing a frame of darkness surroun- ference between a picture, which a mirror can show
ding a white picture. It does chan- and our <selves> -- just in that moment (in the theoreti-
ge a little but not basically if we ima- cal fiction of the lacanian writing) when we ourselves will
gine the empty slide-frame with no have been constructed as an effect of the mirror image.
film in it in the projector. Its almost Of course, identifying <signifiants> with the plane of
the same case, because we have meaning, with their <signifi>, perception can be called
learned too well to identify pictures. a necessarily mistaking function. Why not admit that
Having for instance seen thousands we are blind for the sexual difference as between
of beautiful coloured slides of art- a <0> and a <1>, because we always have to see
works or after somebodys holidays. pictures, and that means: something else?
Im sorry but I think we can never clear our minds and ima-
ges of these terms that form differences. Doesnt this look Admitted that a <signifiant> always is invisible, because
like the base of perception? it only can be realized in the function of a <signifi>, this
can explain quite a lot about current misinterpretations
And if now we go back to the first slide, we could just of reflected images as <ego> or of a <penis> as a <phal-
as much try to see the difference itself by looking with lus>. This means that the invisible of the <sexual dif-
all possible concentration at the empty space between ference> is the <phallus>, the signifiant designated
the two ciphers. It doesnt appear, does it? to mark the effects of the <signifi> as a whole, as Lacan
Of course, this is not such a surprise, since we just writes inThe Meaning of the Phallus.

26
How is it possible then that the picture of the woman, placed on the slide with the representation of the <0> and
considered as one of bodily imperfection, is not percei- the <1>, just in the middle, the empty space <in between>,
ved as imperfect at all, but as the most beautiful thing where we tried to see the invisible <sexual difference>.
in the world, so to say as the model of all pictures? The
seducing picture of such a beautiful <she> must show a An illusion of a lifelike movement cant be perceived, even
supplementary invisible of course. It must even show more if we try very hard, concentrating our eyes on the little
than a missing organ. This means there must be a figures, aligned in the center. Or does anyone see the
doubly determined structure of invisibility in the case of rising or the lowering of an arm? But
the pictorial representation of the <woman>. This must the perforations on both sides of this
be a cheat, a trick, of really sublime cunning. sketched filmstrip let us imagine the
form of the cogwheels in the projec-
<Her> picture must have some attributes which seem to tor and other parts that help to pro-
exclude each other, but which are the base of <her> duce the movement of the filmstrip in
erotic attraction. This <she> must show and claim her the projector. The main part used in
female identity as well as embody the sexual differ- every projector now is the <Maltese
ence itself. A logical paradox is linked with < her> acting: cross>, a device to let the filmstrip
trying to be at the same time picture and difference be- move by fits and starts. During a shor-
tween two pictures, that is <No-Picture>. ter interval of time the film moves,
during a longer the film stands still,
Slow-motion, repetition in an alternating manner. If the film-
strip didnt stand still most of the
To make this thinkable and this means visible in some way, time, there would be nothing to recog-
Id like to quote the function of a well known media nize, but only one stream of colours or greys melted all
technology, being invented for over one hundred years together.
ago. Im speaking, of course of the film, based on the cine-
matographic illusion of motion. There we can take an But these alternating stops and quick transports of the
apparatus in motion as a technical model. I must admit filmstrip take place at least 16 times per second. The
Ive chosen this technology, because I like to have these speed of this projection process has to surpass the speed
mechanisms of transport and the cog wheels of the pro- of the physiological ability of visual perception. So: what
jector seizing in the perforated film-strip. This creates an is happening between the individual frames of a filmstrip,
image, doesnt it? To give a vision of a medium and must remain invisible during the run of the film through
something else: of a structure of the unconscious. There its projection.
my intention could be found: Youll notice that of all
these mechanical parts and seizable mechanisms, Between these individual frames we should be right to
with all their pictorial and imaginary distinctness suppose <the motion>. So let us now examine closely
will remain nothing more than differences after I what we can see between the individual frames of this
described it in my way. By the way this is some sort filmstrip. Its evident. There is nothing to see -- any
of excuse for me referring to such an old media techno- <motion>. Or almost <nothing>, just the same black
logy, to the flickering lights in dark rooms, still quoted tech- line, which seems at the same time to disappoint
nically if you try to watch videos online. But following the and to encourage our desire to see, just like the
line I laid out, my point will be that a connection to the black lines or circles or stars in pornographic
ons and offs of electronical dataprocessing can easily be pictures. This repeated black lines form a border and an
made. interruption between two minimally differing frames.

The cinematographic illusion is based on some- There we have the same problem again, just as we tried
thing invisible. An invisible difference between the to see the difference between the <0> and the <1>. But
successive picture frames on the filmstrip. Once set in only with a strategy of <repeating> this invisibility, some-
motion, these differences melt together for the percep- thing new can come to representation.
tion apparatus (or even as Sigmund Freud called it, The
psychic apparatus to form the hallucinatory effect of the This <repetition> corresponds to the <repetition> of our
lifelike motion within the motion-picture. For, if in visual perceptional structure by the cinematographic apparatus.
perception arises the impression of moving figures on the This apparatus has to mimic structures of the <psychic
screen, then there must have been something to see apparatus>. If it didnt it couldnt produce its illusions on
which was not there. Or -- if you are doubtful, which is our perception, couldnt function at all. And another con-
perhaps adept in these cases of illusion -- which will not clusion can be made: The <psychic apparatus> can only
have been there. Perhaps elsewhere? If you then take out be conceived by the models of media technologies.
the film reel of the projector, and have a close look at the
strip, every motion has gone there. It remain some iden- Because these black lines between the frames
tifiable figures, normally men, in individual frames. Such are parts of a working media technology, of a
a schematic representation of a filmstrip, can now be mechanism of perceptional illusion in function,

27
 they give us really a model of what we already tried tried to make to a <she>, as a doubly determined diffe-
to see between the <0> and the <1>: the uncons- rential structure. How does Sadie Plant approach the <dif-
cience itself. ference>?

Isnt this a real theoretic sensation? Almost unbelievable, The computer was always a simulation of weaving;
but believe me: These black lines bring the im- threads of ones and zeros riding the carpets and simu-
possible picture of a <signifiant>, of <the phallus> lating silk screens in the perpetual motions of cyber-
to visibility. Voil. And why not producing another space. It too presents the screens, the clothing of the
theoretical climax, just now? Do you remember the freu- matrix, already displaying the virtual machinary of which
dian analysis of the <fetish> as a <Penisersatz> ? Jacques nature and culture are the subprograms, and joins women
Lacan takes another step ahead, by claiming that the on and as the interface between man and matter, iden-
image of a <woman> has to be perceived in the function tity and difference, the actual and the virtual.Cybernetic
of the <phallus> to unfold its eroticism. So, where -- the systems are fatal to his culture; they invade as a return
hell -- is the woman in this story? She is -- at least in my of the repressed, but what returns is no longer the same:
animated theoretical cartoon on this slide -- placed insi- cybernetics transforms women and nature, but they do
de the apparatusses of media and perception. For there not return from mans past, as his origins. Instead they
is one zone in this picture, where we directed our glan- come wheeling around from his future, the virtual system
ce two times, trying to see the impossible picture of a to which he has always been heading. For the last 50
difference. Id like to situate the <woman> in this years, as his war machine has begun to gain intelli-
artificial zone. In the middle of a cross, forming an gence in readiness for his last stand, women and com-
intersection, an <in-between>. puters have unleashed a proliferation of screens, intel-
ligences, lines of communications, media, and simulati-
Who is still interested in the image of the <man>? For ons with which to hack it down. No longer the void, the
instance where in this pictorial construction <his> gen- gap, or the absence, the veils are already cybernetic; an
der could be found? The answer sounds bizarre. Once interface taking off into his own unmanned future.
again referring to Jacques Lacan, this position towards
the sexual difference has to be characterized as one of Her approach to the difference (like the difference be-
illusion too. <He> has to pretend to possess this <signi- tween <0> and <1>) in this quotation seems to identify
fiant>, the <phallus>. But for the erotic attraction of his the difference with the <0>. There is something mis-
image this has the strange consequence, that concer- sing. <0>, is that: a lack? In her words the void, the gap,
ning human beings the male parade appears as femini- or the absence. Does the text follow (without noticing)
ne. (cited from The Meaning of the Phallus.) the discrimination of the patriarchal tradition, accepting
This means for our model of the perception of the <sexual and repeating the prevalence of the <1>? In her descrip-
difference> that even the little male figure has become tion, claiming historical validity, the <0> has already dis-
somewhat invisible. Transformed into the impossible appeared in the last 50 years, has mutated to the other
image of this <she>, demonstrated in slow motion. cipher, with the growing alliance of women and compu-
The difference between the raised or not raised finger, ters. But as a consequence we would need an <ersatz-
in latin called digitus, has become irrelevant from this difference>, this has to be now a small and a big <1>.
point of view. <0> or <1>. The big <1> of course stands for the actual woman,
which is: a superior <man> with the prosthesis and
Digital feminism extension of computer technology and communication
lines, a superman reigning effectively over media with
Now I have to go back to my announcement: to install a which to hack it down. <It>, the war machine? The
link from this cinematographic aspects to a possible <he>? The <1>? To hack the male (aggressive) sex
digital feminism. This is not so difficult any more, because AND to glorify a concept of presence at the expense of
as I tried to show: feminism is digital, has to be and the absence, means from my point of view (at the <dif-
has always been. Just a moment: <feminism>? Was it ference> ) a necessary circulus vitiosus or -- with the
all about <feminism>? Yes, because of the necessary con- words of Sadie Plant -- another return of the repressed.
structions of a <she>, subject of and to <feminism> as What will return to her strategy? The difference
a multitude of discriminating strategies, with the advan- between an absence and a difference. The <phal-
tage of reading and rewriting the pictures and concepts lus>, as conceived by the theoretical approach.
of this <she>, constructed by the framing of a dominant
sexually discriminating culture. I just tried to sketch one I think we know this technics of representation. Its a form
of such rewritings of a <she> in the terrains of psycho- of incantations, a <genre> of phallic identification in
analysis and media-theorie. daydreams of omnipotence. And we know this technics
of transporting abstract terms into personification very
The explicit link to a cyberfeminist position can make a well from films. Dont you see the beautiful young, self-
quotation of Sadie Plant from her article: The Future confident she-hero, hacking down the evil war-techno-
Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics. And I think logies? Chased by old police cars, but escaping with her
youll notice at once a difference to the approach I just wonder -virtual magic car, faster, bigger and stronger than

28
everything? A fairy-tale in animated cartoon style, maked the lyrics of the title song: Beware of the blob. It
up with the title of a documentary. It forms quite a con- creeps and leaps and climbs and slides across the
trast with the above constructed and so-called theore- floor and through the door and all around the wall.
tical animation between the <0> and the <1> which As much a splotch -- be careful of the blob.
could as a matter of fact claim greater documentary Sounds funny and sounds like an attack on identity
qualities. itself. Beware: my borders are being absorbed, my iden-
tity, my skin becomes permeable, and I dont really know
Slime who I am any more.
The film doesnt leave any doubts: these dangers have
Personally I came to prefer films with no happy ends. The to do with sex. Especially repressed, especially retur-
others are so difficult to imagine as lasting longer than ning from outer space: and this appears to be <the
the filmreel. Happy end means, the film has to end. blob>. I find it interesting to concentrate on the position
Because: what would be going on afterwards? In a film of the leading <she>, played by Aneta Corseaut. And
with a bad ending you can at least continue the story by would like to show you the representation of this <she>,
yourself, inventing or desiring a happy one, whichever which I think has to be met in a constellation with the
you prefer. <blob> as her alter ego. Some slides shall now show the
main elements.
I think of a short dialog in Glen or Glenda -- the unfor- 1. The cinema.
gettable film by Ed Wood from 1953, with the more The worst accident, the scene,
explicit subtitle I changed my sex. I guess I have a pro- where more subjects than in
blem, I mean a real problem I had never to face before. any other scene of the film are
Our whole existence is one big problem after the killed by the <blob>: Thats in
other.And this is pronounced in such an affectionate tone the cinema. Thats the cinema.
that I have to refer to it later. A film in the film about an
immersion of the real. We can
Its just: I love horror films. Its just -- that I learned that read on the cinema board the
they are all about <castration> representing the real fears program of the Midnight
of what is believed to be a <woman>. They are from my Spooky Show:Daughter of
point of view all about the <sexual difference>, working Horror with Bela Lugosi.
out the mysteries of the <glance>.
So I d like to show some scenes of an US sci-fi film from 2. This is the moment, when
1958 which I personally use as a theoretical magnifying the masses are rushing out of
lens on a fascinating literal figure in cyberfeminist writ- the cinema. The revolutionary
ing. Just quoting two or three lines of the <Bitch Mutant ideal. Interesting is: what will
Manifesto> from VNS Matrix, that are: The clitoris is have been happening just befo-
the direct line to the matrix -- VNS Matrix., VNS Matrix re, in the cinema?
terminators of the moral code, mercenaries of slime, go
down on the altar of abjection. Somehow there is the 3. Now as one visual answer to
image of a so called <bad girl>, shining up in my phan- this question I could show a
tasies, producing enormous, frightening masses of girls underwear. Its a glance
<slime>. Because <she> is somehow always sexually on a pettycoat of the leading
excited. She always can -- you ll know what. Or what she, just being carried away
exactly does <slime> mean? This was my question and from the greedy <blob>. As you
I found my personal answer in this science fiction film, may notice soon: almost all the
called The Blob, directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth jr. in 1958. women in the film fall down to
earth, when their eyes meet the
Beware of the Blob creeping <blob>.

A typical brief description, this one taken from the There must be something like a recognition as in a mir-
Leonard Maltin Review, is: Endearingly campy classic ror, an identification. A strange relationship which com-
of cheap 50s sci-fi has Steven, (Steve McQueen) in his bines the murderous <blob> to the female sex and its
first starring role) leading teenagers into a battle to frightening effects. I ve put together some scenes on a
save their small town from being swallowed up by giant video tape, not only resuming my personal keyscenes of
glop of cherry Jell-O from outer space. Not really all that the <blob> but combining them with scenes of a second
good, but how can you hate a film like this? film.
This is not very precise and even worse, I think doesnt
hit the crucial subject of the film. I would call it the Daughter of Horror
<sexual difference>. You can seize this aspect much
more, if you accept that the starring role is not given to This angle of different images and scenes refllecting each
Steve McQueen, but to this strange <blob>. These are other tries to to make a comment on the <film in the film>,

29
 the Daughter of Horror with Bela Lugosi referred to in tioned above.My <montage>, suggests that the scenes
The Blob: the reason why the people have to leave the from Glen or Glenda which I added to the scenes of
cinema. I looked it up, but didnt find a film with this title. The Blob , are the ones explicitly referred to in The
Even the poster shown in the cinema does not help in this Blob. They can give to see on a different plane what will
search, for it is quoting the poster of a famous sci-fi film have been happening in the cinema, causing the ultimate
Forbidden Planet (1956, directed by Fred McLeod horror. They may now overlap, invade or even swallow
Wilcox). I decided to concentrate on the non-fictional part the perception of the original scenes of The Blob, sho-
of the title, the name Bela Lugosi, because the film wing giant masses of <blob>-material penetrating the
Daughter of Horror seemed to be a cunning fiction, cinema -- which from behind will soon be reaching the
invented for The Blob. In 1958 Bela Lugosi was alrea- spellbound audience. We are allowed to have a glance
dy dead for two years, remembered especially for his early at the film being shown: some overacted black and white
Dracula interpretations which became personal cult. scenes, an artificial and pathetic male voice as story-tel-
I searched for his last films in the fifties and found a very ler in the off. These scenes appear to be striking simi-
spectacular coincidence with the female attribute as lar to certain moments of <Glen or Glenda>, as to the
Daughter of Horror: the very strange and wonderful film, whole visual and narrative structure -- as you can
dealing explicitedly with the <sexual difference> , the Ed examine.
Wood Film Glen or Glenda from 1953, men-

filmstills from The Blob filmstills from Glen or Glenda

30
31
 Cyberfeminism

I hope well have been seeing <slime> in the intersec- Lacan, Le Sminaire Livre XX: Encore) A paradoxal
tion of these two films -- a virtual substance like <cyber- <she> in the space between images and words --
feminism>. This strange existence, crossbreeded in fil- forming this difference. Imagine a paradoxal mate-
mic representation from the immortal <blob> with the bor- rial (as the <blob> will have been) penetrating and
dercrossing <Glen/Glenda>. I d like to claim it for the producing short-circuits in a logic based on the
sex which is not one, is ce sexe qui nen est pas un principe of identity and presence.
(Luce Irigaray) or to say it with the brilliant lacanian
shortcut: ...does not exist. Il y a une jouissance elle, If it were upon me, exactly this would be: Cyberfeminism.
cette elle qui nexiste pas et ne signifie rien.(Jacques

32
Alla Mitrofanova

LOOKING FOR "INFORMATION", "SUBJECT" AND

"BODY" FROM THE METAPHYSICS TO THE PRESENT
(cyberfeminist perspective)

Introduction 01.
1) The general motive for my work is to discover how to I propose to follow along a historical passage. There is
be happy, working well, liberated from compulsory coding, a danger of getting lost and using too much historical
normative images, prescribed and limiting functions. To slang. But there is a benefit in making a few terms more
be able to do what u want and to do it productively. In strong and operative.
other words, I am going to dig around a few connected
topics: a) how could we distill a database of informa- There is a methodological possibility to divide tradition
tion from structuralist and phenomenological attitudes; (last 3 centuries) into 3 parts in a linear manner on the
b) to free the transcendental subject in ourselves who still basis of academic historical classification and critical eva-
has a dominant position in understanding the world. luation of tradition: x) kantian reimburse of metaphysic,
S(h)e demands an order in an identity system, in struc- y) post-structuralist reimburse of kantian tradition, often
tures of representations and perceptions. (S)he fights for called after Kant transcendental philosophy, and z) my own
a stable ontological surface, when descriptive and ope- eperiments in cybertheory. We try to show a tradition on
rative models are determinant; c) how could we install 3 control levels:
an embodiment/ disembodiment problem which favors 1) how terms are defined to operate;
embodiment into theoretical discourse organized 2) what reference system serves terms;
around the consciousness. As a body we take a world and what is taken as immanent;
a body control and limited operative tools to take and to 3) how it serves needs. A body is a checking point.
use it. The problem is to dig up the body into discursive
practices, to make techno discourse embodied for the sake _________________________________________
of cyberfeminism. METAPHYSIC TRANSCENDENTAL OPERATIVE
2) Cyberfeminism is an ideological speculation which ser- _________________________________________
ves us as a browser for viewing and navigating through
current cultural changes and historical heritages. A good <terms>
thing about the label is that it is a provocation, makes ESSENCE DATA
emotional noise, conceptual mess. It is a fake ideologi- THING OBJECT EVENT
cal interface. Cyberfeminism is a useful term to feminist EGO TRANSCENDENTAL SUBJECT AVATAR or
philosophy for its radical impact on body and techno- HUMANISM SERIAL SUBJECT
logy theories. _________________________________________

Hacking is becoming a common operative term to reach <reference system>

a quick result in economy, culture, politics, and theory from
an outsider position. We have to redefine a problem, to UNITY CONSCIOUSNESS KEY WORD
http://www.dux.ru/virtual

reduce or rethink tools and terms. Looking for short cuts LOGOS STRUCTURE INTERACTION
in philosophical heritage for explicit directions means CATEGORIES HYPERLINKS
taking on a hacking operative model. Hacking produces REPRESENTATION
a functional quick model, it helps to safeguard our own _________________________________________
interest. Any good descriptive or analytic discourse has
a predatory power inside itself: it is very easy to step into <immanent>
and hard to run away from an order where everything
looks rational and connected. Hacking philosophy means ETERNITY * DATABASE
to analyze concepts taken from specific traditions into EXISTENCE-EMBODIMENT)
actual contexts, to purify their operative model and rein- _________________________________________
stall them into current situations in order to get theore- *Immanent plan is beyond the model, it could be full of
tically functional positive tools. surrogates like Power, Knowledge, Death of
Transcendental Subject

33
 1. Classic Metaphysics (beyond Aristotle) insists on iden- me the internal foundation or time dimension of
tity of things and equity of Reason. Ego is obliged to cogni- Phenomenon. Subject trapped itself installing a system
ze adequacy thru doubt. METAPHYSIC creates mysterious of immanent operative tools: What is a consciousness
order on the plane of Eternity. A Thing is presented by supposed to be. Cognizant police is a Sense as a hyper
its essence. A Thing could only be questioned to show significance . The Sense represents the deep structure
its essence. Essence of things is a shared essence of natu- of representations. Sense doesn't apply to nature, but it
re. A nature is already completed as a Universe and is a basic method of understanding, it is a result of
Eternity. The Essence is un- cognizant operations. Sense
changeable. A metaphysical body applies to the human subjective
is already complete, as a contai- ability to represent the world as
ner of subliminal and brutal a structure with concrete iden-
things, it could be misrepresen- tity of objects. Consciousness is
ted, but a correction should bring always reducible to itself and its
essence back.The Body is a own circumstances -- total recall
mirror of the Universe, a micro- of consciousness.
cosm of eternity. A power is done
as an order of things. 3. A Cyber paradigm reduces con-
sciousness from transcendental
2. The tradition of transcenden- ability, which was a self-refe-
tal philosophy could be traced rential system, to an operative
from Kant to Husserl,and basi- term and renamed it as an intel-
cally means making a foundation ligence. If the Subject lost its
of ontology analyzable. Trans- generic position, its dual com-
cendence is taken now not as ponent -- object lost its guaran-
interface to Eternity or God, but tee of identity becoming data.
as a gnosiological and ontologi-
cal problem. It is not a thesis of beliefs on the plan of eter- 01) PERCEPTION, REPRESENTATION, TRANS-
nity and unity, but it is a problem of building on identi- CENDENCE AND DATA.
fied tools of philosophical reflection -- what became a
consciousness. For Aristotle material is presented as form. For classical
metaphysic the thing is equated with essence. There is
Object is an identity term to represent Being outside of no problem of subjectivication or alienation of form or
Subject. Observer and observed, object and thing.
Transcendental Subject are beco-
ming an ontological duality. In But for transcendentalism the
this way we take the con- traditional world is possible as a
sciousness and perception as a product of a Subject based ope-
concrete dominant operative rative system: perception, tran-
machine. Here we should rein- scendence, representation. In
stall a plane of immanence from current (cyber) culture we have a
nature to consciousness, from quite different operative model:
union of being to transcendental
reason. It affects the whole story: - the order of representations
if immanence is shifted from which was organized as a system
nature to consciousness, from of Knowledge is reduced to infor-
essence to representation, we mation as an unstructured cata-
exclude logue of data. When knowledge
be-came information it means
Being which is not represented in that a self-referential system,
accepted forms -- objective forms. which up to now was called con-
Reflection and practical reason sciousness, is lost together with
are tools to operate with objec- the perception of a unified sub-
tified forms. A self-referential system is a hierarchy of ject, which worked as a filter in making objects.
categories from casual to abstract, from local to univer-
sal. The moral state is incorporated into consciousness. -Transcendence became an empty menu, there is no task
It should control the identity of the Subject and modali- to transcend or generalize information in hierarchy and
ty of formal appearances or representations. Everything unity. We use information without attempting to organize
goes to be hardly connected and controlled system. it as a system, to follow a genesis of data. A data is an
System goes to represent itself as a structure (totalita- operative unit of the catalogue. Data refers to itself or
rian way) or phenomenon (more liberal way). Time beca- another data excluding a subjective referential order.

34
The transcendental subject simply rests meeting data. Body without organs is a body prepared for cutting. It could
be data Franken-stein, but the process of conserving
-Perception as personal empirical foundations of ob- baby and baby delivery is strictly immanent and cannot
jects are not usable with data. We use data without be manipulated. We can not manipulate an Event, we only
control by our perception. Data normally passes over a could desire and help the Event to happen. (as opposed
filter of perception. There is no question whether it is per- to this the transcendental subject could manipulate
ceivable, or what is a reality. Any existing data has its events because the main part of it: cognition and descrip-
own rights, it is legislated be- tion is a priority of the Subject)
cause it exists.
Data could be revitalized only by
So there's the adventure of data being copulated with intensities
becoming more and more con- (subjectively or discursively gene-
troversial. Data was born in a rated) -- productive forces of revi-
transcendental paradigm to be a talization.
specific kind of intentional object
(like a picture or a sculpture for 03) SUBJECTIVITY AND REFE-
transcendental art), also control- RENCE SYSTEM
led by perception. This was a very
limited position. But soon data A concept of Subjectivity always
ran away from the control of per- has been combined with refe-
ception and intention. Data rence systems (transcendental
applied for the new status: subject was made as an opera-
neither Subjective, nor objective. tor of transcendental act).
Data refers only to the database. "Subjectum" as a term (as
The database belongs to the Heidegger recovered) consists
plane of immanence. of "what is already done to us"
and "how we are going to take it": world and tools. In the
02) FROM DATA TO DATABASE transcendental view Subjectum is only possible as per-
COINCIDENCE (event) OF DATA STREAMS sonality and its tools belong to consciousness.

A database is a uncounted sum of local catalogues, even The Superhuman (superman) of Nietzsche is invited in dif-
though some of them have rigid organization, the sum can ferent discussions as a breaking point into conscious-
only be a pool of data. Different streams of information ness based philosophical tradition from one side and
don't even cross each other, go in anthropology based theory (how
different directions without it was shaped by Foucault) of
knowing each other. They don't subject. Superhuman is an embo-
recognize a dominant stream. died consciousness, it could
Database is hardly alienated cul- mean the end of self-
tural heritage, it belongs to the consciousness service. If sub-
plane of immanence not to the jectivity is embodied, it should
order of the subject. There is no take as a reference point not the
subjective reference system in transcendental hierarchy of cate-
the order of data. Lets take as a gories, but complexity of body
conclusion: database is a pool of functions. If it is embodied as
information organized locally or superhuman, it should ignore
discursively, which could be ima- limitations given to human as
gined as Bodies Without Organs social and historical dimension
(thanks to schizoanalytic dis- grasped in structure and pheno-
course). Bodies Without Organs menon. Superhuman highlighted
are made as certain locality, but hypercultural links in opposition
presented and could be used as to human, who is materialized
unlocated data (deterritorialisa- and located in a concrete situa-
tion). But the functional status a of database is an ar- tion, to which he is obligated and only possible. That is
chive. How could it be revitalized? Supposedly by only lin- why superhuman is a scandal - discursively he is not pos-
king data we produce a kind of data event. A coinciden- sible for transcendental humanity and for anthropology.
ce (event) or hyperlink of data could produce the Event,
could animate data, deliver or revitalize the Body Without A process of phenomenological reduction of cons-
Organs. (In the case of Power: It could be produced in any ciousness to its foundations, shown by Husserl, was a
nook and transmitted on any level of social organizati- way to reduce transcendental subject to non-existence.
on) Hyperlinks of database neglect an order of localities. It seems to be a turning point for Heidegger to develop

35
 a fundamental ontology of existence. "Dasein" is a kind desire helps with switching one designation to another.
of self- reference scheme for the heideggerian Subject. Body is not a form, has no meanings, has no exact bor-
It is a way to deliver the Subject to the immanent plane, ders, it is not a concept (data), but a field where concept
to install subjectivity into an open scope of existential pos- (data) could recreate a function. In other words, we could
sibilities. Dasein proposes to process a multitude of pos- say that skipping immanence now is folded into the
sible individual realizations,as a kind of system operator. body.
(This is how it is used in post-heideggerian psychiatry by
M.Boss "The influence of Martin Embodiment includes hyper-
Heidegger on the birth of the dimension to be a controlling
alternative psychiatry, Logos #5, instance, to function as a singu-
Moscow 1994). The main cha- larity above the formal compen-
racter of Dasein is temporality, dium of catalogue. We could take
but not only in the Sense of mor- a body as a positive functional
tality, but as a temporal process temporal model in which perma-
and finitude of any identificati- nently changing being is equali-
ons. zed with permanently changed
forms (information): desire = abi-
In that discourse Subject is hard- lity = possibility + unlimited (or
ly connected with Event (Co- satisfactory) DATA BASE of infor-
being). Event produces Identity, mation (concepts) and formal
but event can not be represented expressions and images. If the
as a chain of identified objects. balance is not achieved, opera-
In Event Identity is temporal and tive system has bugs or another
cannot produce identity orders. dysfunction: wrong concepts
Heiddegger, Nietzshe, Deleuze disorient existence and existen-
gave us a notion of process iden- ce became destructive, even self
tification which is 1) coexistence, 2) Event and 3) activi- destructive. If we are embodied correctly, we feel the free-
ty, which are only a place for subject to be presented. dom to live, if not -- we have some fields of activity
Event is temporal, unstructured, local, personal. Event con- blocked for us (as in compulsory gender divisions came
structs from meanings (database) and meaninglessnes: to traumatic end in Europe in 1960th).
existence, Being, intensity...
Embodiment is a hot key for the contemporary culture
The Being shown by Heidegger as an open stream of exi- comparable to what the "soul" or "god flesh" was for
stence is limited and functiona- medieval culture, and organs and
lised by Deleuze into intensity anatomy for classical European
as a preformal force vitalizing culture. So embodiment is an
Event and operating with Body intensive cultural process (micro
Without Organs. poesis), new for every culture
(formal catalogue). Even talking
04) EMBODIMENT AS A POSI- about disembodiment we install
TIVE NECESSITY some concepts in process of
embodiment. EMBODIMENT as a
Body is presented in a culture as necessary task of creation.
a different structure of concepts
of what body is + images + fun-
ctional models how body should
act. Our task is to put body into
a flexible controlling position and
to liberate body from compulsory
prescriptions of what body is. A
connected question is: either
body is done for sake of percep-
tion or it is a location for personalized Being (existence)
to happen. In the latter case a body could be equated to
Nothingness. Any way a personal body should be gene-
rated on the field of exis-tence, intensity, but not on the
field of regulated descriptive concepts. What is an
existence, intensities (energy/drive)? It is opposed to
information? It is not desire, desire on the microlevel as
Foucault showed,is still arranged by cultural coding,

36
Irina Aktuganova

Mother, Father, Power

and the Global Project
When I think about gender injustice and social imbalance, Father could not replace Mother in her Power because
I ask myself: does injustice exist in reality or only in the he could not give birth. He could only create his own alter-
minds of feminists, and does imbalance necessarily native territory, and prove it's importance and equality to
mean injustice? I would also like to ask somebody: why the one of the Mother. So people had to run the terrific
do we speak about unlimited men's/father's power? ideological machine. The most complicated task was to
And where did they take this power from? It's a very create a way of legitimizing the Father's Power. The
strange situation, because men have no ontological/imma- project needed a supreme Male Power who could dele-
nent reasons to be powerful. The physical advantages gate his authority to Father. The problem was that the
could not be the basis for social and political power. All Mother's supreme Power was based on her ontological
of us -- men and women -- are sons and daughters. We natural background. The Father's Supreme Power had no
follow our mothers. Mother's influence is very strong in clear, uncontestable ontological basis and was always
all aspects -- from the physical to the spiritual. virtual. The mutual male/female efforts produced the
huge narrative to support father's space of responsibi-
Mother forms our mind and destiny. In archaic cults, lity and authority. All the culture from theology to philo-
mother was a god, and God was a mother. Women's sophy, science, art and politics were organized like an
Power was supported by her natural right to give birth ideological industry to support father's authority and to
and love. Males had to serve mother's mission of repro- prove his right to be valued. And even this tremendous
duction. A male's life was not valuable and was sacri- effort and permanent work could not save Father from cri-
ficed by the community to the needs of reproduction, ticism.
family, generation.
Today, listening to women's talks, reading their stories,
We know about ancient hunters and soldiers, but could I can see that in spite of cultural differences, women from
you imagine these guys, who have to die every time to everywhere underline the strong patriarchal power in the
save a group of women and kids. It was the main pur- social field and unlimited Mother's Terror in the private
pose of their destiny, their supertask. They were not one. .It means that the project was successful.
even fathers, only something like the males in an animal
herd with strong legs and hands. During the last two or maybe more millennia,the narra-
tive of the Father's gained too much. The virtual
Of couse I don't know what really happened, but asym- father's world, that was produced, became too real, too
metry between Powerful Mother and males became large. It came into conflict with something very impor-
dangerous for the population. The male had to become tant for the harmonious functioning of our system. So,
Father. (Compare: Harmoniously organized family rela- society like a selfregulated system, began to extend the
tionships depend on equal expression of father's and Women's space, women's territory again, using at least
mother's elements. And Mother always supports Father's two possibilities:
authority in spite of the personality of the actual Father.) 1. Discreditation and Occupation of father's virtual world
We usually link the patriarchy and Father's Power to 2. Extending of Mother's discourse (creation of virtual rea-
Monotheism. Monotheism may have been born as a lity of its own)
reaction to the unlimited and eternal power of Mother.
But it was not men's reaction to their oppression, it was Again, our common male/female efforts in different
not a revolt, but rather an unconscious social reaction, spheres of life have been oriented towards this goal
when women delegated part of their power to men. It was since the end of the 18th century. And before 1800 a lot
not the father's conspiracy, but Father's/Mother's agree- was done for the future of feminisation. I have no doubt
ment. In terms of modernity, it was very ambitious to risk that visible cultural and social activity, as well as many
a complicated collaborative project to transmit some of the historical events we cannot interpret in terms of
power to the Father. It was necessary to form and extend feminism, nevertheless served the needs of feminism. And
the territory of male responsibility and to increase his at the same time they are only visible sings of any "super-
separate voice. natural" task (or absolutely natural task that we could not
yet observe from our local point of view, or we still don't

37
 have the key to understand) that has to be realized in dif- logically. You and we came to very similar results. But our
ferent ways in different cultural traditions. We realize our experiences are mutually useless. You could not abolish
task unknowingly everywhere, without thinking about it. private property and church, we could not produce your
We do it in the same way as sportsmen in synchronous kind of ideological reality. But we could understand that
swimming, but we cannot understand one another. none of us is more clever or more progressive. We work
together for the "global project" and the aim of this pro-
The most obvious difference and misunderstanding is be ject is hidden from us.
ween East and West in the frame of Christian culture. Of
course the borderline between East and West coincides
with the division of Orthodox and Catholic-protestant
traditions. This division reflects our psychological and cul-
tural difference, nothing more. But this difference de-fines
the ways of our activity in this world -- the way reality
is constructed.
West: method of theoretical and ideological narration
- well-developed theology
- scientism in philosophy
- strongly developed noncontradictory discourse is not only
the instrument of knowledge, but the primary instru-
ment of constructing a noncontradictory reality.

So, the virtual,ideologically strong Catholic-Protestant

Father's world was established like an ideology and sup-
ported by theology/theory, science , politics and art.

East: ontological method

- Undeveloped theory
- art in science in philosophy
- East does not care about description of experience or
phenomena. Reality could express itself through ontology
and history.
- so the project of empowerment of Father was realized
like the practical transmission of Mother's rights and
gifts to their sons and husbands. Russian women acted
in the social field through men, because they (women)
took care of their authority and feelings.

The disembodiment of father's world and further femi-

nization is developing by the traditional means.

For the West

- through the development of the Father's discourse and
science, in theoretical, political and sociological ways,
using all the ideological achievements of the western past.
Every more or less influential theory had became the plat-
form for feminist reflection and reaction: Rousseauism,
Marxism, Freudianism, and others... Western feminism
uses the same "patriarchal" tools (words, ideas, scien-
tific, social and political technologies) for it's aims.

For the East

- through ontology and history. Without any theory, and
special feminist social and political activity. It looks like
the chess game, where the first step was the separa-
tion of the church from the state by Peter the Great in the
18th century. After a few practical steps, including
male/female Russian terrorism,the Czar's renunciation
from Power, murder of Russian Czar. Soviet governmental
feminism and atheism and, not least, abolition of priva-
te property,the Father's discourse died in Russia --onto-

38
Susanne Ackers

language
versus numbers
Before I start with the lecture, I would like to say some My definition of a medium is "a communication tool
words about the first cyberfeministic international. based on the mix between numbers and language. The
Yesterday evening, we had a discussion about our press third point is "photography and film -- grab reality".
review and as you might have read on the poster outsi- Followed by "Computer technology as ART as Interface".
de, we are 40 women meeting here with different back-
grounds from different countries. Some of them can be
named as theorists, artists, programmers - but as you see, 1
here, we do not have an exhibition, we are not writing - *art* is based on numbers
texts, we are not programming - we are meeting here to - the use of mathematics as an abstract system of
look at each others use of the computer and internet tech- communication
nology and strategies that derive from these specific - *art* work as a product
uses of the technology. - Gothic - architecture
(www.ikm.his.se/~susanne/LiberalArts/Platon.html)
I would like to say in advance that I am a teacher of art - Renaissance - painting
history since one year, using the internet as my tool to (www.ikm.his.se/~susanne/LiberalArts/Platon.html)
produce, present and publish at the same time and my - Baroque - sculpture
talk which I am giving at the moment is directed to the (Leonardo:
group of women that are part of the Hybrid Workspace www.ikm.his.se/~susanne/Renaissance/Renaissance3a.html)
and I will try to bring up some points of the discussions - Liberal Arts that are divided into a group based on
that we have already had since Sunday. But as well, of numbers or on language
course, my talk - and this is the reason for our decision (www.ikm.his.se/~susanne/LiberalArts/Platon.html)
to set up our meeting as a conference - to give you, the
audience and visitors of the Hybrid Workspace on the
documenta X, the chance to take part in our process of 2
thinking. - medium is a communication tool between somebody
who produces something and somebody who is looking
I would like to welcome you to sit down here, in our part or receiving the product
of the space, my talk will last 30 minutes, if you just want - art as products brings up the question why were these
to get a glimpse, please use the projection screen on the products produced
http://www.ikm.his.se/~susanne
other side of this space. - different media are using different senses
- architecture - being in the space, hearing sounds that
On the projection screen, everybody should be able now, are reflected
to see two windows, that were opened with Netscape, - painting - visual sense, no longer linked to a special,
that is the most common browser that is used at the inter- fixed space
net at the moment, the right window is used as a con- - sculpture - touchable, a 3-dimensional product in the
tent list, the left window is used to give you visuals con- space of the visitor
tinuing my talk -- all of them are part of the education - euphemeric art is developed
material that I am using in my teaching. - the discipline "art history" follows

My talk is divided in several chapters. My first chapter

is called "*art* is based on numbers" and you notice the 3
asterix symbols - everytime I am using these symbols, I - split between art and science
am addressing the common understanding of art -- which - photography is based on the perspecival rules that
was part of the discussion in our group. The second were developped in Florence by Brunelleschi in the
chapter is focussing on the "medium" which is a more 1430ies
recent word than *art*. - perspectival rules as software, the camera as an auto-
mat, a hardware
- a camera grabs visual from 3-D- *reality* onto 2-D-paper

39
 - this influences our perception of *reality* This human body, free from its inclusion in virtual reali-
- wearing glasses or lenses, we are constantly correcting ty is now able to interact with the database via compu-
our perception of reality according to the Renaissance ter technology and internet.
invention - I suggest to understand computer technology as a medi-
- *art* is trying to avoid these rules um - following my excursion through the history of art
(www.ikm.his.se/~susanne/NineteenthCentury/Nineteenth4.html) history above - that combines numbers and language, pro-
- why were artists using the medium of oil painting to gramming, using numbers to create visuals, develop
visualize something that could have been grabbed by pho- time-based interfaces. Like this, each person is able to
tography? use all these features in a way that creates an individu-
- Edouard Manet vs. Adolph Menzel: negative and posi- al interface.
tive *art* - This interface allows and asks for the creation of an indi-
(www.ikm.his.se/~susanne/NineteenthCentury/Nineteenth3.html) vidual context for these readymades that are the mate-
- photography and TV is continuing the history of per- rial of the database. Like this, the context is not only rela-
specive, in the last decades, MTV and others are decon- ted to the history of mankind, but also to the personal
structing this tradition history of the person who is developping this interface.
The creation of this individual interface is time-based and
it is a productive work in and with this database. Every
4 individual has to reposition his- or herself within or
- *art* vs. ART towards this pool of data.
- the main stream of the understanding of *art* is focus- - With this concept of "computer technology/internet as
sed on the visual sense and on the implication of three ART as interface" there is no longer a difference between
things: that we have a concept of a work, the production neither the concept, the production or the presentation
time of the concept, the presentation of the product as well as there is no difference between the creator and
- also in performance art or concept art or land art, a con- the viewer.
cept is developing at the same time as its production and - Computer technology/interface is no longer restricted
at the same time of its presentation to a preset of media, no longer related to a space that
- originally, claim for visualization was a need for mne- is shared with the human body, this interface is time-
motechnic reasons based which it was in times of visualizatio - this inter-
(www.ikm.his.se/~susanne/Renaissance/Renaissance2a.html) face is ART
- perspectival art was developed as a tool to visualize the
space between bodies or relations between bodies were I would like to say some words to my lecture which was
visualized by their relation within space. As a conse- an experiment. We are sitting here at one of the most
quence, the human body went out of focus. The perfect known international art exhibition, the documenta, and
visualization of cyberspace is the result. Virtual reality we are sitting in the Hybrid Workspace which is a work
environments which are mostly based on the same per- space that was created to give groups like the cyber-
spectival laws show a lack of bodies. The development feministic group the possibility to experiment with the
of avatars as representatives of the human body within new technologies in context to the individuals back-
these spaces is still in process - to populate the empty grounds.
spaces of cyberspace.
- The body, that fled perspectival painting For me, as an art historian, the use of my language, of
(www.ikm.his.se/~susanne/Renaissance/Renaissance3b.html) my words, is trying to give you another view, is trying to
was captured and grabbed again by the invention of the give you other perspectives, onto visuals that were made
camera and film and is today in the process of leaving with numbers. In a way, I try to reframe your percepti-
the story of visual arts once again: it is denying its inte- on, maybe of reality. Nevertheless, it is very questiona-
gration into cyberspace or virtual reality. ble, why we are sitting here, in this dark room instead
of sitting outside in the sun. But it is part of our being here.
Alla Mitrofanva's comment after the talk:
5 "I enjoyed this talk very much, because I like how Susanne
- Computer technology/Internet as ART as interface hacked the classical history of art. As a former art histo-
- relating to Ala Mitrofanova's talk on Tuesday about the rian, I know very precisely, how terms are made in clas-
concept of the internet as a 'database' and the concept sical art history, on the base of content theory, how they
of the human body as an 'operative multitude' produce beauty of thought and the whole context what
- this database - the internet - is not pointing or claiming art is and for what it is produced. And Susanne did
of being complete, on the contrary, it is using fragments hacking, in, I would even say, in a straight hacking way.
of all media and all times as ready-mades. History which She defined the problem differently, found different tools
is sharing the same space as the human body in museums and got a quick result."
and libraries is now being integrated into this database.
- My ready-made lecture should show how the human
body has left the cyberspace of western perspectival
visualization in which it was captured by cameras and film. You are welcome to contact me: [email protected]

40
Shu Lea Cheang

Brandon
On June 30, 1998, the Guggenheim Museum, in asso- event, which will incorporate avatar performance and the
ciation with Society for Old and New Media, DeWaag, deployment of a virtual court system, will convene a
Amsterdam, launched its first artist's project commis- panel of legal scholars and provocateurs to preside a net
sioned for the World Wide Web. Conceived by filmma- public trial of sexual assaults in RL (real life) and cyber-
ker and media artist Shu Lea Cheang, BRANDON: A One- space.
Year Narrative Project in Installments explores issues of
gender fusion and techno-body in both public space and BRANDON is curated by Matthew Drutt, Associate
cyberspace. Curator for Research, Guggenheim Museum
(http://www.guggenheim.org) and produced in associa-
BRANDON derives its title from Brandon/Teena Brandon tion with Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam
of Nebraska, USA, a gender-crossing individual who was (http://www.waag.org), Caroline Nevejan and Suzanne
raped and murdered in 1993 after his female anatomy was Oxenaar/curators; Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue,
revealed. Cheang's project deploy's Brandon into cyber- Harvard University (http://www.arts-civic.org), Anna
space through multi-layered narratives and images whose Deavere Smith and Andrea Taylor/directors; Banff Center
trajectory leads to issues of crime and punishment in the for the Arts, Alberta (http://www-nmr.banffcentre.ab.ca)
cross-section between real space and virtual space. The Sara Diamond/director of media arts.
project, a multi-artist/multi-author/multi-institutional
collaboration, will unfold over the course of the coming BRANDON is part of a broader program in the media arts
year, with interface developed (1996-1997) for artist being led by John G. Hanhardt, Senior Curator of Film and
collaboration and public intervention: bigdoll interface, Media Arts at the Guggenheim Museum.
roadtrip interface (Jordy Jones, Susan Stryker, Cherise
Fong); Mooplay, interface (Francesca Da Rimini, Pat Funding for BRANDON has been made possible by grants
Cadigan, Lawrence Chua) and panopticon interface (Beth from The Bohen Foundation, a Moving Image Installation
Stryker and Auriea Harvey). System programming by and Interactive Media Fellowship from The Rockefeller
Linda Tauscher. During 1998-1999, we would invite guest Foundation, a Computer Arts Fellowship from the New
curators to institute multi-author upload for each inter- York Foundation for the Arts, and in Holland, grants from
face. The Mondriaan
http://brandon.guggenheim.org
Foundation and the
In development with Society for Old Ministry for Cultural
and New Media, DeWaag, two net- Affairs. This project
link forum/installation are also sche- is supported, in part,
duled for Theatrum Anatomicum inter- with public funds
face (with Mieke Gerritzen, Janine from the New York
Huizenga, Roos Eisma, Yariv Alterfin, City Department of
Atelier Van Lieshout): The first, "Digi Cultural Affairs
Gender Social Body: Under the Knife, Cultural Challenge
Under the Spell of Anesthesia," to be Program. The pro-
held in fall 1998, will bring together ject is being hosted
noted cultural critics, genderists, sur- by USWeb Los
geons, and bio-technologists to recon- Angeles. Artist in
sider binary codes of male-female residency (New
and the mapping of the digital body. York): Woo Art Inter-
The second forum, held in May 1999 national . Artist-in-
in conjunction with the Institute on residency
Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard (Amsterdam):
University, is entitled "Would the Amsterdams Fonds
Jurors Please Stand Up? Crime and voor de Kunst.
Punishment as Net Spectacle." The

41
 Daniela Alina Plewe

Ultima Ratio
Software and Interactive Installation

For Ultima Ratio conflicts from real life and literature are are no longer just casually arrayed alongside each other,
reduced to their logical structures in order to process them but rather enable an automatic process of evaluation. The
in several functional and dysfunctional modes. To do logical core of Ultima Ratio accesses a databank in
this, a decision-support system from the field of AI has which various types of primarily literary conflicts
been implemented and modified, which permits those con- are stored as logical reconstructions. Installation visitors
flicts to be remodeled as pro and contra argumentations. can expand this databank with new arguments, coun-
The logical processes are displayed in realtime visua- terarguments, facts, and assumptions. The formalizati-
lization as moving 3-D diagrams which simultaneously on of conflicts encompasses their interpretation and the
serve as interfaces. In the installation, this animation is explication of intuitions.
projected onto an overhead disk. The images follow the
observers glimpse by means of a head/eye tracker, whe- Should Hamlet Kill Claudius?
reby the diagrams are distorted in accordance with the Yes, since he wants to take revenge on Claudius who mur-
observers ever-changing perspective. A chorus of com- dered Hamlets father. No, because he believes that
puterized voices provides a recitation of the dispute thus someone who is killed while praying goes to heaven. Fact:
generated. Claudius is praying. Therefore, do not kill him. What if
Hamlet senses atheistic doubt (heaven?) in himself?
Ambivalence Then yes, kill him.
Aesthetic experience is often the experience of contra-
dictions. We encounter dilemmas, paradoxes or other Shakespeare
forms of ambivalence in works of art, and we are all fami- Hamlet Act 3, Scene 3
liar with the figure of the literary hero who in an apo-
retic situation must make his tragic choice. Hamlet. [approaches the entry to the lobby]
Now might I do it pat, now a' is a -praying -
Fact: praying (claudius)

And now I do 't, [he draws his sword] and so a'

goes to heaven, Rule: in_heaven(Y) <- kills(X,Y),
praying (Y)

And so am I revenged. That would be scanned: Rule:

take_revenge_on(X,Y) <- kills(X,Y)

A villain kills my father, and for that...

Fact: killed(claudius,king)

I his sole son do this same villain send

To heaven...
Why, this is bait and salary, not revenge.
Pro and Contra Rule: - take_revenge_on(X,Y) <- in_heaven(Y)
Ultima Ratio is based on a formalism which permits
ambivalences to be represented in the form of argu- X wants to take revenge on Y if Y killed a person Z
mentations. In contrast to classical logics, several new being close to X, and the killing is not justified.
varieties of formalism developed by Artificial Intelligence Rule: goal_revenge(X,Y), <-
research tolerate inconsistencies and, for example, also close(X,Z,), killed(Y,Z), not justified (killed(Y,Z))
permit exceptions to rules.
Hamlet and his father are close to each other.
Formalized Conflicts Fact: close(hamlet, king)
Bits of information presented in the form of arguments

42
 There is a conflict, if somebody wants revenge and to Medea, in which a rival-rule comes into play just as
can't. it does in Casablanca.
Conflict: + <- goal_revenge (X,Y), not take_re-
venge_on (X,Y) Reasoning Running Wild - Counterarguments Forever
Everywhere illustrates the omnipresence of possible
Hamlet killing Claudius is assumed false, but this may doubts.
be changed in the "remove conflict" mode.
Assumption: revisable (kills (hamlet, claudius), false) Inversions - Negations with Negations serves up logi-
cal Dada with inverted facts and rules. Does the com-
plement of a logical inference also encompass
the irrational?

Modelling Virtues - Modifying Tools of Life

Various human qualities, mental states and
dispositions are interpreted in the framework
of formalism and can be brought up on scre-
en. Courage = live wrong, but win. Despair =
navigation in a reluctant environment.

Gobal Ponderer - Continuous Automatic

Reasoning If the visitor does not wish to inter-
vene, he may observe Ultima Ratio run its
course on its own through the domain of ambi-
valence.
Decision-making
Several rational principles underlying the human decisi- Mental Spaces
on-making process are implemented in the logical core The logical stories of the deductive engine are visua-
of Ultima Ratio. For instance: dont believe a statement lized as 3-D diagrams in a virtual space. Arguments
if its opposite is true; dont draw conclusions from defea- appear as fragile, abstract constructions in which pre-
ted information, etc. With the help of these overriding mises and conclusions take shape as geometric forms.
deductive rules, the system can now carry out logical ope- Balance, gravitation and other effects illustrate the dyna-
rations. This inherently rational deductive engine is used mics of argument and counterargument. The process of
to produce various functionalities and dysfunctionali- drawing conclusions corresponds to a movement through
ties, all of which provide commentary on the line of virtual space.
argumentation as a method of dealing with conflicts.

Functional and Dysfunctional Modes

Cascades of Doubt - Struggling Agents reconstructs the
internal monologues of the heroes (or agents). With
change agent," users can influence these characters by
changing the rules and assumptions which form the
basis of the heroes beliefs. Change world revises the
facts from which the program derives conclusions and
generates logical alternatives to the original scenarios.
Remove conflict offers suggestions as to how some con-
flicts could be avoided, in that other assumptions about
the world are accepted as true statements.

War of Convictions - Arguments as Forces elaborates

arguments as forces operating among and between par- Passively Interactive
ticles of knowledge. (This feature can be expanded to a A generated navigational path conducts the visitor through
multi-agent scenario.) The visitor selects a conflict from the abstract landscape. If he wishes to access more or
the databank, and the system provides him with the different information, he may navigate independently. The
relevant arguments. guided tour is available to the visitor at all times.

Crossovers - Tracing Motifs connects various plots Abstraction

and contexts according to their dramaturgical motifs. Using a model in the shape of nested spheres, informa-
When rules occur in several contexts, the system crea- tion surrounding a central contradiction is arranged out-
tes a link between them and generates synthetic cha- ward in successive layers. The inner levels present spe-
racters. Thus, the revenge-rule from Hamlet can lead cific information such as video sequences, graphics, or

43
 original texts. Outside of them appear the abstract, logi-
cal formulas employing variables instead of individual
names. The inner levels convey operational flow infor-
mation such as attack, defend, check exception, conflict
to the outer levels, in which only the structure of the argu-
mentation is discernible. Which representation the vie-
wer sees depends on his virtual distance to the contra-
diction.

Selfcentered Visitor
The interactive installations images are projected from
above onto a round disk suspended from the ceiling,
below which the visitor stands. An eyetracker (or headt-
racker) registers the viewers line of sight; this allows the
visualization software to calculate the viewers moving
point of view and to deform the visualizations in accor-
dance with that perspective. Thus, the viewer becomes
the totally egocentric subject, whereby the intentionali-
ty of his view (or the direction in which his head is poin-
ting) serves as a metaphor for the intentionality of his thin-
king.

Between Silence and Scream

A chorus of text-to-speech synthesizers recites the argu-
mentations as a polylogue. The accentuation, tonal colo-
ration, and rhythm of the superimposed voices reflect the
logical structures. The argumentation oscillates between
silence and screaming both extremes can be heard.

Wisdom and Despair

When human beings confront the dynamics of argument
and counterargument, the outcome can be a refinement

Credits:
Concept, Visualization, Interfaces, Production: Daniela Alina
Plewe,
Logic Programming: Michael Schroeder (City University, London),
Uwe Kuessner (KIT Project, TU Berlin)
Computer Linguistics: Manfred Stede (KIT Project, TU Berlin)
Visualization Software: Andreas Raab, Bela Bargel, Joachim
Boettger (Department of Simulation and Graphics, University
of Magdeburg)
Sound: Florian Reifenberg, Wolfgang von Schweinitz
Demo Stills (b/w): Stefan Gandl
of knowledge (science, wisdom) or it can result in despair. Softimage Operation for Demo Animation: Dirk Weinreich,
On the other hand, a computer program free from any Tristan Thnnissen, Jens Eidinger, Martin Dahlhauser, Pik You
obligation to act in the real world can reason endlessly. Chan, Tilo Meisel
Supported by: Ars Electronica, Linz, Hightech Center Babelsberg,
Potsdam, Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin, Brouillard Precis,
Marseille, Team-Konzept, Berlin
Thanks to: Bettina Behrend, Kit Blake, Manuel Bonik, Carlos
Damasio, Clemens Fischer, Norbert Ebenritter, Robert Hdicke,
Thomax Kaulmann, Johannes Krug, Frank Kunkel, Ina Lindemann,
Ulrich Malik, Iara Mora, Oliver Scholz, Ingo Schtze, Norbert
Streitz, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Julean Simon, Axel Stammler,
Gerd Wagner
Sponsored by: Loneliness of Understanding, Inc.

44
Olia Lialina

art.teleportacia

ART.TELEPORTACIA is The First Real Net Art Gallery that How can I really own the artwork which I've bought?
delivers on-line access to net.art pieces to individuals and Proprietary is a fiction. And even more in time of internet.
companies at fair prices. Using a new and unique pro- So, Art.Teleportacia in alliance with artists sells the access
prietary system for the distribution over the internet, to the artwork. As soon as you bought an artwork, you can
Art.Teleportacias mission is to redefine the purchase decide about its accessibility. By the way, it is the same as
process for art and works of art. with off-line world: the owner of the painting has mainly the
right to choose, whether this artwork is shown publically,
As the first company to offer on-demand net.art works
whether it remains only in private or company rooms,
over the internet, Art.Teleportacia is challenging the tradi-
whether it is hidden in cellar...
tional art selling system and the insitutionalized esta-
blishment of curators and directors by offering an easi-
Who controls the access to the artwork?
ly to access presentation platform, a broad and qualified
Accessibility of a sold artwork is checked by a special script,
selection, the best service and support for our customers,
which runs on art.teleportacia server. Art.Teleportacia arran-
and last but not least: context, critics and certifications.
ges the purchase of the artwork, Art.Teleportacia arranges
For Art.Teleportacia team net.art is more than a gag or for every artwork a special contract, which regulates the fur-
a one-season fashion. Net.art is the art of the future and ther accessibility, and it guarantees to keep this contract.
it opens a wide range of possibilities to a new genera-
tion of artists and collectors. How can I be sure that the artwork i bought is really the ori-
ginal and not just a copy?
Art.Teleportacia is your chance to buy original work of
Art.Teleportacia provides a special certification and a
internet art for your internet office or home page.
unique proprietary system, which ensures that the artwork
FAQ you purchased is the original. For example, one simple way
Why Art.Teleportacia sells net.art but not paintings? to prove that an artwork is original: URL in location bar. It
Today World Wide Web is widely used as a medium for buy- is included as an important part into the performance of the
ing and selling. Information, goods, services. A lot of off-line artwork. One can copy HTML code and images of simple
galleries come here to promote and sell their collections: net project, but URL can't be doubled.
photo, paintings, sculptures. At the same time a new gene-
ration of artists appeared in 90s: net artists. They create their
stuff in the net and for the net. These works meet great inte-
rest, commercial as well, but it mostly comes from media
art exhibitions and other off-line events and institutions.
Net.art is exported from the net. We find it more natural to
create a market for net.art inside WWW. There are several ways to store and access the artwork.
Which one would you advise to choose?
Why do you start this gallery with "Miniatures of the We wouldn't like to exclude any possibility. Selling/
heroic period? buying net.art is a new field in art business. Definitely this
http://art.teleportacia.org

We selected some small early pieces of net.art by most well- system can work in more than one way. We are going to eva-
known internet artists for the first exhibition to stress that luate different strategies. Which one is the best depends
the spirit of the net is in details and that the weight of net.art on every single artwork, it's specialities, the customer's
can't be counted in Kb. We wanted to interest and view of the Internet.
come back, to naive and brilliant experiments with net lan-
guage. There is a history behind each project. They really It seems, the idea to exhibit banners as art projects is in the
mark a new epoch in art history. air...
Yes, now internet artists start to include banners to their pro-
Does it make sense now to spend money for a net.artwork? jects, and even work with 468x60 images as with certain
It is your chance to invest in a new field of art business now. WWW- genre. In fact this minimalistic form gives not less
Prices will increase soon and high rates are guaranteed. chance to express yourself than huge web projects full of
Whether you are a private individual or a company graphics and scripts. For Art.Teleportacia 'office/banner' sec-
Art.Teleportacia will consult and support you in setting up tion is not only a collection, but first of all a guest book, where
your own collection of the most contemporary art. If you are people leave their impression and attitude not in words
seriously interested in development of your virtual office and but in laconic style of banner. It can say a lot. And also such
take it as seriosly as a real one, you will not amuse your cli- messages reflect what their authors think about situation
ents and guests with childish interactive games, but will turn in general, what they suggest as the best way to adverti-
yourself to real net values and quality. se First Real Net Art Gallery. Isn't it a real gift to future web
historians? :)

45
 Helene von Oldenburg

SpiderFeminism
In the following lecture I will give an introduction to the
new field of scientific future research and its sensatio-
nal findings. A new method makes the future visible and
unveils its arachnomorphic structure.
In the second part of the lecture I will discuss the effect
artificial insemination -- a given practice for nowaday's
spiders -- has on web-related evolution and we will Baker, University of Texas, found the rate of evolutionary
close with an outlook on the genderdiversity to come. changes higher than you would expect it to be in 10 mil-
The new method, derived in a series of elegant ento- lion years. That is a rather high mutation rate.
mological investigations allows an unexpected view into Since thousands of years man-
the future of earth: The today dominating Homo sapiens kind tried to get knowledge
will be superseded by an arachnomorphic species. That about the future. But the well-
is a spider-like species. known mantic methods like
The recently developed method not only places arach- Tarotcards, Astrology, IQ-Tests,
nology into an anthropological context, but considers etc, never work propperly. They
the arachnotic structure of images as they frequently are useful only for the next time interval and they are
appear among other places in the human psyche and transparent exclusively to a very few. For the period of
time we are discussing here these man-
tic methods are not useful. Furthermore
we have to question their scientific
reliability. Therefore we came to deve-
lop a new and reliable method for futu-
re research.
As you may know the human mind is
build like a network, is organized as
one and functions as one as well.
Thereby it is the perfect link between a future populati-
on on earth and today.

everyday life. Related discoveries from different

sciences like evolutionary psychology, experimental
physics or sociobiology show the highly significant pre-
ference for a variety of thread-bound constructions like
lines, knots or nets. When analyzing the underlying struc-
ture of our ideas and inventions we find a networking
dynamic in nearly every part of life, science, art or society.
We must confirm the fact that the arachnoidic species
of the future will develop out of the today known spiders.
The results still are a little vague. For sure we know that
the spider-like species is the dominating life form. And
humans still exist. At least a human structure was found.
Supported by contemporary genetic technologies the
increasing nuclear radiation presents optimal evolutio- The advanced timetravelling and telepathic civilisation
nary conditions for spiders to establish themselves as cul- of the future invades nowaday's psyche via dreams and
tural superior life form. In the Tschernobyl area Robert channeling. The dream suggests itself as point of contact

46
 Let me give you some examples:

Literature offers a wide range

of graphic descriptions concer-
ning the future. Now we are
able to read them properly. To
name only two of thousands let
me choose "Spiderman" and the
Bible. Artists often have a
clearer view of things to come.
Nevertheless they often take
images they conceive too
literally, as we observe in "Spiderman", for the Homo
because it is, as Sigmund Freud said, accompanied by a sapiens hasn't gotten the power of a spider (like Peter
low endopsychic censorship. Channeling means the Parker), his intentions are secretly taken over by a
contact between living beings and entities of other spiderous being instead.
dimensions. The human mind is at the receiving end. (So
we have to rewrite the theories of the unconcious). The Another very important book in
contact between future and today is initiated by a spider our culture is the Bible.
entity (SPE). We speak of SPE as long as we don't know Thousands of years old, the
if it is an individual or a group which is contacting us. story still structures the western
societies. It's main symbol is
While being stored the cross. A cross is the abstract
away into memory the of two interwoven threads, a
origin of the future's knot. It symbolizes not only the
messages is suppres- smallest common denominator
sed. Later when relea- of a web but also the Homo sapiens bound into and
sed out of memory sacrificed on the web. The invention of the cross as a
mode the messages leading symbol resulted in the ability to think in abstract
have been transformed terms. This process formed the building of web-related
into ego-based intentions; occasionally with an ego- brain structures, and therefore conditioned global net-
dystonic quality. The result is a widely spread thread fixa- works, today's internet and obn (old boys network). The
tation, an obsession with weblike organisations and all wide dissimination of the internet is closely related to the
kinds of rituals honoring future-related devices. religious importance of the cross in social systems. Today
Certainly you know about the newest theory of experi- we observe the fusion of the cross and arachnoids through
mental physics, the String theory or Superstring theory. the existence of the internet.
It claims that the smallest part of every atom is not some The spider entity, when con-
particle, but a tiny tiny string. The different quarks we dis- tacting us out of the future,
covered up to now -- "up, down, strange,charmed, bot- hides all traces of its commu-
tom, top" -- and their antiparticles are thought to be dif- nication with us. We only can
ferent energy positions of one and the same string. speculate on the reason of this
Newest calculation of J.Richard Gott, Princetown strategy. We assume it is part
University, prove that two strings when speeding at close protection of today's living
range along each other produce loops. The submicroscopic spiders and part a guarantee
area is swarming with tiny tiny loops. These loops are that current technical develop-
so fast that they reach into the past. They reach back- ments will go on undisturbed.
wards 10-42 sec.
What we observe instead is a
It is a proven fact that these strings do travel through dif- widespread fear, phobia and
ferent times. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity postula- defensiveness of spiders, a pre-
tes similar rules for the submicroscopic and the macroscopic ference for every kind of
univers. Therefore the arachnoids of the future use preci- weaving techniques and the
se physical techniques for their communication with today. need to train our children at a
May I sum up: The future sees an arachnoidic species as very young age in web-balance.
cultural superior life form. Individuals or groups -- up to now
we are not able to confirm their identity without doubt -- But also a high creative poten-
contact us via time loops and psyche projecting certain ima- tial has here its roots. For exam-
ges. Because we are not conscious of this process we trans- ple do we owe the invention of
late the projected information into web-related ideas. And writing to these circumstances.
therefore we carry out the spinning future.

47
 Another future-related topic besides nets and threads,
we find in all constellations which include hair. Hairy legs
are a feministic issue. Not only in the USA but in Germany,
too. Due to its lack of hairiness a human leg can not be
compared with a spider leg. Nevertheless, wrapping it
in fine nylons will certainly enhance its attraction. Though
the hairs of spider legs are sensory organs, netstructured
fabrics function as an ersatzorgan. For undivided effect,
be sure to remove all natural grown hair of the human
leg before you wrap it in texture.

At this point I want to say some words about the repro-

Did you ever ask why the landscapes we live in in Europe duction of spiders. Today spiders still have seperate
are covered not only by nets of streets, railways or elec- sexes. Aside from a few exceptions the females are
tricity but also lined with fences? Fences remind people larger than the males. Because of their small body size,
of save and homely aspects of the future. males need fewer molts to reach maturity than do
females; consequently, males mature earlier.

The cultural task of webconstruction generally is done by

female spiders nowadays, because most male spiders
change their habits after their last molt. They leave their
retreats or webs, and often they no longer even catch prey.
When approaching a female, males always risk being
dealt with as prey. Spiders have therefore developed a
special courtship behavior that generally precedes mating.
This courtship is species specific and ensures that hybri-
dization is avoided. The common belief that spider males
are eaten by the females during or after copulation is true
only for a very few species. In most cases a male either
walks away or beats a hasty retreat right after copula-
We understand the structure of lattice windows. For we tion. But in any case male spiders have rather short lives;
love to take a net-structured view to the world. Even if many die soon after copulation. Females usually live
it is sometimes connected to a trapped feeling. much longer.

We have to face the problem of Now the question of all

threadfixatation. For thread fixa- questions! How do they do it?
tation -- and we all know how The answer is: They practise
disturbing that can be sometimes artificial insemination. When
-- is strongly related to the arach- the male spider reaches matu-
noidic species of the future. rity it spins a small special web.
The sperm is put onto this
After immobilizing their prey sperm web and transfered to
spiders wrap it with silk threads to store it until they are special copulatory organs which
getting hungry. So we don't have to wonder any longer are located near its mouth. The
why so many eatable things are somehow or other sperm can be kept here if ne-
connected to threads or nets. Or why nearly all the food cessary all its life. When a
we need for survival has to female spider accepts the
be carried home in plastic courtship the male inserts its
bags? This occurance is palps (as these organs are cal-
called identification. It is led) into the vulva of the fema-
arachnotic induced behavior. le. The female stores the sperm
in a special skin bag. Later
Hopefully I don't have to point when her eggcells are ready
out what is driving all of us to fertilization takes place. Several
get ourselves online. And why batches of eggs -- cocoons --
again and again we enjoy our can be fertilized, even if only a single copulation has taken
fingertips crawling on the key- place. So the female spider chooses the time of ferti-
board? Are we spiders or lization. She is managing the artificial insemination.
prey? When and more interessting how did you experien-
ce the influence of an arachnoidic entity after going online?

48
 Just compare this elegant Some examples:
natural technique with
techniques humans use It has 57 sets of X-chromoso-
nowaday's, and realize mes and is related to knots. It
how clumsy they are. was found in Berlin around
And youll understand Xmas last year.
why future arachnoids
stayed with their technique
of artificial insemination. This one resembles a structure of 276 sets
of X-chromosomes. It is sophisticated in
I will now demonstrate how the genderdiversity which information transfer and often responsible
we find with arachnoids in the future is due to different for channeling and projection, sometimes
sets of sex chromosomes. The exact process is not yet related to cloning techniques.
fully unveiled. We can only guess, that they used gene-
tic engeneering, supported by nuclear radiation. Maybe Don't take these shapes too literally. We
have to translate their underlying structure
here. We don't know how arachnoids in
the future with 8 or else sets of X-chromo-
somes will look like. We are talking about
our images here. They may
change with time, informa-
tion and new or better rese-
arch methods.

It was found with 17 sets of

X-chromosomes, intellec-
tual limited, but useful for
traffic control. But note: we
do know nothing about futu-
the beginning was accidental, that means induced by us, re traffic; here it gets high-
by our way of life; maybe it was intended, that is spiders ly speculative.
of today are much more intelligent as we think it possi-
ble. So the how we don't know, but the what we see. It was captured two years ago
right in the center of Hamburg.
The sex chromosomes of spiders are X-chromosomes. It has 142 sets of X-chromoso-
Contrary to insects or mamals spiders possess no Y- mes and is skilled in program-
chromosome. Aside from the "regular" chromosomes ming and political affairs.
(the autosomes, A) , two X-chromosomes represent the In one species we found a
sex chromosomes. Whereas female spiders possess a structural similarity to avatars.
dual set of these X-chromosomes (2A+X1X1X2X2), male However avatars may look like,
spiders have but a single set (2A+X1X2). Consequently, we know they are arachnoids. So please, never identify
after meiosis the egg cells have one set of X-chromoso- with your personal avatar without being aware of this fact.
mes, but the sperm cells are of two types: either they like-
wise possess one set or they lack sex chromosomes At the moment -- the field is still new -- we are not sure
altogether (A + 0). Sex determination is thus dependent if the specializing we found with certain genetic dis-
on the type of sperm cell that fertilizes the egg. positions are exclusive or just a choosen talent.
Please note, that some of the found spiders have two
eyes. That is the human factor. Today's
2A + X1X1.....XnXn spiders are found with eight, sometimes
six eyes.

A combination of reproduction techniques like genetic About the merging between arachnoids
engineering in combination with artificial insemination, and humans we don't know very much yet.
parthogenesis and cloning made it possible to multiply But a complete research program has been
the set of sex chromosomes. This results in a wide range started on this topic. Soon we will know
of sexes, though they all are still arachnoidic. more about possibilities, techniques and
problems concerning the merging of
spiders and humans.

Information: [email protected]

49
 Barbara Strebel

Traveller's Health, Communicable

Diseases and Transmittable Disorders
from the Institute of Network Particle Collision, Division of
Quarantine International Infectious Disease Control and Traveller's Health
SYNOPSIS: With the advent of new technology and the dis- use of repellents, protective devices, screening, filters,
semination of cultures, the increase in travellers' risk of expo- avoiding proximity, monsters and demons. Although the
sure and subsequent acquisition of communicable disea- effectiveness is variable, depending on the patterns of
ses and transmittable disorders must be considered in resistance and compliance with protocols, self-extraction
concurrence with the enhancement of global transfer. This should remain strict. Commonly used tools (pop, ftp, www)
section includes practical information for potential travel- provide no security or immunity against disease trans-
lers on hazards due to invasive behaviour. (Some of these mission or invasive behaviour. Localisation of potential
recommendations are common sense precautions; others health hazards vary and are site specific, therefore known
have not yet been scientifically proven or documented.) "foci" of endemic areas should be avoided. Transfusion
TRANSFUSION GUIDELINES FOR INTERNATIONAL can be measured at point of entry, when providers no lon-
TRAVELLERS: As the communication technology revoluti- ger reassure bonding modes or remote console-8-sign. For
on takes on parasitic dimensions, there is a growing public many vector-based diseases found in hazardous environ-
awareness of the telepresence epidemic and a resulting ments, non-specific matrix preventatives are available via
concern about acquiring the virus through transfusion. multiple DNS.
Commonly known txt treatments have mutated into emer- EMERGING AND RE-EMERGING CASES: Cyclical Viral Infectious
ging strains of new media, showing signs of distress and diseases: acute motion sickness, altitude sickness and
illness, and in some rare cases, death. Colonial invasive diseases thought to have been eradicated such as sleeping
behaviour is often a carrier of contamination, contagion and sickness, yellow fever, Hypertitis, Plague, Hysteria / Testeria,
hidden agendas. are often encountered in Mall-area infested zones, but
FIRST CONTACT AND EXPOSURE RISKS: Common exposure remain, however, lurking.
takes place during first contact, implemented as an inter- DIAGNOSTICS: Take a culture smear by puncturing a lesion.
active spatial installation. Initial transfer has been made This culture is a standard indicator, although JCV culture
user-friendly and a simple handshake engages the trans- mutation can occur. When labs are unavailable, revert to
fer, using a connection oriented protocol to exchange with sniffing excretions by collecting GUIs and spuffing leakage.
the remote system, which verifies that it is ready to receive;
the connection is then established. Situations of proximity TRAVELLER'S DIARRHEA: Diarrhea and digestive disorders are
http://www.irational.org/cern

increase contagion and risk of dis-ease. Recent access to a syndrome characterised by an increase in the frequency
transmission devices and desires, combined with the will of movement in contaminated or hazardous areas, as com-
to virtuality, have taken epidemic proportions. Sero- mon sources for the introduction of infection via a variety
prevalence studies indicate nearly universal exposure by of parasites, or by consuming shell accounts. Commonly
adulthood with approximately 10% of the susceptible associated symptoms include cramps, nausea, urgency,
population infected per year. fever and malaise. Episodes usually begin abruptly due to
exposure to digestive disorders found in lists and automatic
Since the early manifestations of multi-channel complex
digest processors.
disease, exposure rates have increased the number of
infections and autoimmune deficiencies while decreasing DigitAll outbreak was registered in Vienna in the winter of
key recovery rates. Travellers are more susceptible when 1996, plaguing the evolving new media to a level of alar-
transmitting MSG pathogens to other persons and will ming paralysis and atrophy. Combined with the Vienna
increase the risk of infection if any sign of suppression is virus, it causedevacuation, dispersion, dislocated mem-
shown. bers and ensuing extinction. These syndromes are found
SYMPTOMS: Loss of sensation, headache, pallor, nausea, to be highly adaptable, easily implemented and are diffi-
dizziness, insomnia, increased salivation, inertia, atten- cult to eradicate. Precautions when surfing in contamina-
tion span reduced to apathy, drowsiness and somnolence. ted data fluids: Never surf alone or when under the influ-
Combined symptoms can lead to disorientation, compli- ence of drugs or alcohol, and never dive head first into an
cations and eventual death. unfamiliar source of data or high streams.
REVENTION AND PROTECTIVE DEVICES: To be taken when VENOMOUS BYTES: Contact with common bugs, worms
leaving know regions, host cells and native domain (DNA): spiders and crawlers cause unpleasant reactions:
Common sense and avoidance of risk factors, including the Swelling of nodes, blurred vision and disorientation; while

50
also transmitting communicable diseases. Repellents and infection would indicate an increase in illness proportio-
protective nets are advisable as prevention against poi- nal to the duration of stay in rural areas, there is no corre-
sonous bytes. Most venomous bytes are the direct result lation between the rate of exposure and the incidence of
of handling or harassing spiders and iguanas. Here the velo- travel-related morbidity and mortality.
city of venomous bytes exceed common transmission. TRANSMISSION seasons vary from periodic epidemic out-
VIRUSES, ANTIBODIES, ACTIVE AGENTS AND ALTERNATIONS: break to acute attacks. Incidence rates may not accurate-
Along with the newly acquired bacteria, travellers may ly reflect risk to nonimmune visitors and business travel-
acquire viruses. Viruses are infectious agents with both living lers because of high immunisation rates in local populations.
and non-living characteristics. Among the living characte- Humans are incidental to the transmission cycle, although
ristics of viruses are fantastic rates of reproduction and high levels of viral transmission may occur in the absence
mutation. Since viruses lack any metabolic machinery of of human disease. All transactions using ATM and SDT
their own and are totally dependent on their host for repro- (Sonic Disintegration Technology) protocols leave traces and
duction, they cannot grow in synthetic environments. Five disposable waste, that are routed</A> in the world net-
main steps of viral infection are: work matrix causing lesions which are instrumental to
1) absorption -- 2) penetration -- 3) expression access to vital organs.
4) replication -- 5) assembly and release RESISTANT STRAINS AND LIVE VACCINES:Vaccines, possib-
There are two main schemes used by viruses to enter a ly first invented by the Chinese around 1500, using in-
host:mediated receptors and direct fusion. After a decade- active viruses, cause a limited immunity reaction. Live
long search, scientists have discovered fusion (hot or cold) vaccines use attenuated, non-virulent strain viruses. Some
plays a key role in the attacks of the virus. The primary tar- of the benefits are that they can be taken orally and that
gets of viruses are altered cultured cells. boosters are not necessary. Manifestations, mutations and
DATA indicate that meticulous attention to consumption can manifestos within new media are growing rampantly,
decrease the likeliness if developing viruses, however, without the required control system devices needed to
most encounter difficulty observing the requisite restrictions. restrict irrational behaviour, often the cause for resistant
Common bugs are vertically targeted frames and hori- strains or the retreat-ment in TAZ oractivism-related pro-
zontal dislocation. Vicious viruses emerge when they remain vocation. Low tolerance and related disorders are site spe-
latent for a long period of time. Once internalised in systems, cific and often congestive in nature. We have no data con-
they can then be improved at home: Dark Avenger is a fast cerning common infection rates and no natural immunity
injector, optimising assemblage; Terror is extremely viru- is found in emerging technologies and their related disea-
lent; as are Nomenklatures; Belgrade Vascina interrupt tra- ses within community and concentrated areas of things.
cing and ebola is a thread. For check-ups, booting from an Higher risks must be considered when acquiring techno-
uninfected system is recommended, as well as the imple- logy or exposure to emerging cultures in remote areas or
menetation of microbes. when visiting contaminated hazardous sources.
CONTROLLED studies have indicated that a variety of TREATMENT: Classical treatment: one shot, simple dose,
agents are effective, but that they depend upon the patho- unless recurrent. Suppressive therapy is being developed.
genic behaviour and resistance pattern of the pathfinder, In most cases, placebos remain the most effective treat-
in the area of exposure, where multiple DNA lookups aid ment. In cases of relapse, looping, loss of batch or retrie-
in research. Resistance is the least common, but this may val rate, reboot dosage before reverting to brute force,
change as the use and awareness of these agents increa- wipe and swap (meta-transfusion is advised in severe
se worldwide (bandwidth hogs, swinefever, flamming and cases). Personnel who come into close contact with con-
spamming. A variety of absorbents have been sited in taminated material without barrier attire or in contact with
hijackings. Research is underway (but often not imple- compromising emissions, must be considered exposed and
mented) in areas such as the anonymous third party carri- kept under close supervised surveillance. For disease of con-
er, mix masters and publicly available algorithms. Active sciousness, consult a CAE Qualified Doc.
agents, conglomerations, such as the HIP epidemic, are bre- CONCLUSION:
eding grounds for more effective implementation for rese- We do not have the data. The esti-
archers in highly infectious areas. mated cost of retrieval rates, due to
RISKS of acquiring vicious viruses are extremely low for most travellers getting lost, change of
travellers when travelling in groups; however, the risk of address or sudden and unac-
the individual traveller is highly variable and depends on countable death, is not vital. The
factors such as season, location and duration of stay as well most vital consideration is the cost
as on exposure to surveillance attacks by swapping. to the community.
Often attacks trigger acute seizures, as in the case of VIP The number of people currently
occurring on Vienna's ISP confiscation, but these have not living with contaminated data sour-
been radically implemented. ce or total transfer by host country
THE HUMAN FACTOR: It is important to consider the role that is unknown, but it is estimated to rise to two thirds of the
humans play in the spread of these infections. Although the data flow population by the year 2000.>
possibility of exposure to contaminated data fluid and viral

51
 Margarete Jahrmann
SUperFEMinisme
generated by PROTOCOL-INHERENT DATAVATARS
/'___\
____ __ __ _____ __ _ __ /\ \__/ __ ___ ___
/',__\/\ \/\ \/\ '__`\ /'__`\/\`'__\ \ ,__\/'__`\/' __` __`\
/\__, `\ \ \_\ \ \ \L\ \/\ __/\ \ \/ \ \ \_/\ __//\ \/\ \/\ \
\/\____/\ \____/\ \ ,__/\ \____\\ \_\ \ \_\\ \____\ \_\ \_\ \_\
\/___/ \/___/ \ \ \/ \/____/ \/_/ \/_/ \/____/\/_/\/_/\/_/
\ \_\
\/_/
Superusers can define her position in online world by Text net is displayed. By going through the inside -- not the
and Texture constantly generated from Netprotocols. controllable outside -- of 3dimensional objects different
Inside the economy of attention you have to be contex- textures of your actual movements in the net -- or online
tualised in the appropriate way, but also to be defined spent time -- or logfiles of your chosen destinations -- are
as proofable unity, Corporate (Id)entity. This is only displayed. Time is also displayed by sound samples.
possible by a display of hardfact Datavatars. Sound is showing the traffic or speed/slowness of
dataflow.)
\\ //\\ \
Server-PERFORMANCE setup
.\\ ///_\\\\
:/>` /(| `|'\\\ 1. At Superfem lectures the performer is doing the
Y/\ )))\_-_/((\ things she is talking about simultanously. She starts
\ \ ./'_/ " \_`\) from time to time a new trace route and navigates
\ \.-" ._ \ / \ through the 3D objects of logfiles to create a moment-
\ _.-" (_ \Y/ _) | specific databody for the lecture. The audience can see
" )" | ""/|| it on the objects displayed and hear it by the sounds run-
.-' .' / || ning parallel to a lecture.
/ ` / || 2. The VRML objects are live generated and navigated
| __ : ||_ through. The images from the computer are projected
| / \ \ '|\` directly onto the performer and her equipment ( 2nd com-
REAL VIDEO http://www.konsum.net/fem

| | \ \ puter gives constant soundbasis and is also projected on

| | `. \ the equipment itself). In the performance setup the inter-
| | \ \ twinedness of the Real Life online is becoming evident.
| | \ \ 3. The audience will also see some ASCII textbodies scroll
| | \ \ through and will hear this bodies TEXT -- literally taken
| | \ \ -- read by the voice generator of the computer. It sounds
/__\ |__\ like concrete poetry and gives ambient audio background.
ASCII images are important for the gift economy prac-
(*)(*)[email protected] tised in net-communication. This is the counterpart of
See Filters, Logs, etc transfered on hardfact Datavatars -- the text and language centered
http://www.konsum.net construction of the self, and avatars understood as
fictional identities.
THE PROJECT in progress
4. Keywords inside the VRML Objects are giving links to
The display idea for Datavatars can also be seen as a sort the display of certain commandos. Traceroute , Lookup
of new browser for the internet. It is not displaying the System, Disk Use, ls -- all you dont have to know the
web (=text and images), but 3D shapes,
## ## ## ##
based on personal logfiles and netprotocols
# # # #
according to individual activities on the net.
# # # #
Sound is triggered according to the traffic, the
# # # #
speed of the online connection between dif-
# ### # # ### #
ferent servers you are targetting.
# ### # # ### #
The walk through datsets can be displayed ## ### ## ## ### ##
inside VRMl objects. The texture of different
shapes is determined by the data available in the protocoll commandos meaning, but they serve as links into new
layer beyond the web. (The structural aspect of the inter- objects, displaying concrete info as texture and shape.

52
 NN::::::::NNN::::NNNNNNNN
N::::::::::::NN:::::::N
NN::::::::::::::NN::::::N
NNNN:::::::::::::::::N::::N
NN::::::::::::::::::NNNNNN::N
SUperfeminisme THESIS
NN::::::::::::::::::::::::NNNNN necessarily constructed or fictional but can be hard-
N::::::::::::::::::::::::::::NNN factbased.Logfile-texts in Unix Shellwindows show the
After some time one could get used to use this sort of basis of the net-communication on a script layer. Ordinary
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::NN
interface and could probably be able to read it not just just Superusers have access to this level of the net.
NN:::::::::::::::::::::::N:::::::::N
as aesthetic object but as tool, having a broader quali- Everybody becomes a Superuser via the scripts, started
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::N:::::::::N
ty of navigation, accessing different levels of the net. via the Konsum Website. Such "Superfem Avatars" are
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::N::::::::::N
The latter is used as grid and having a more emmersi- Superfictional, and Supergenderous, defining sex by
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::N:::::::::::N
ve quality in experiencing also info by sound (in 3D transferprocesses and transparence.
NN::::::::::::::::::::::::N::::::::::::N
attention model)
N:::::::::::::::::::::::N::::::::::::::N
N:::::::::::::::::::::N::::::::::::::::N Digital Sounds and VRML Objects can be generated
Inside the linksystem -- which the net is much more than from netprotocols. They display shifting personal pro-
NN::::::::::::::::::N:N::::::::::::::::N
a space-- you can be defined inside the economy of files and permanently changing personal datasets.
N:NN::::::::::::::NN::N::::::::::::::::N
attention by having a evident hardfact Datavatar, which Everybody should also be able to do her own
N:::N::::::::::::N:::::N:::::::::::::::N
you determine yourself. The hardfacts Datavatars inner Superfemperformance by using the website.
N:::::::::::::::NN::::::N::::::::::::::oo
irony is, that you always can tune your datavatar just
N::::::::::::::::::::::::N::::::::::::o@@
by using it., because it is visible, you also can influen- Lecture Content:
N::::::::::::::::::::::::N:::::::::::No'
ce (control?) it. This is completly different from the SUPERFEMINISME(*)(*)CULTURAL CAPITALISME FORMULA
N::::::::::::::::::::::::N::::::::NNNN
system of invisible control of teleworking concepts.
N::::::::::::::::::::::::N:::::::N:::N
N::::::::::::::::::::::::N::::::::::NN PER4MANce KONTEXTualisation (or SERVER LINKS) =
Datavatar TEXT/URE are generated on each Server. increase in credibility = direct transfer from symbolic and
N::::::::::::::::::::::::N:::::::::::N
They are based on the hardfacts of online live, which social capital into economic capital by an surplus of net-
N::::::::::::::::::::::N:::*mampf*:N
are N:::N::::::::::::::::N:::::N::::N
logfiles etc. These infos count in the Docuverse. credibility
Avatars, identity or even Gender dont have to be
N:::N::::::::::::::NNN::::::N::::N
N:::::::::::NN::::du bist der beste
N::::::::::::::::::::::::::NNNNNNNN ~~~~~
NNN::::::::::::*mampf*NNNN:::::::N N><::::::N
N:NNNNNNNNNNNN::::::::::::::::::N *mampf*
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N NN:::::><:::N
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::*mampf* :::::::><NN
N::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N *mampf*::::NN
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N# NN::::*mampf*
N::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N##::::::::*mampf*
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::*mampf*::::NN
N::::::::::*mampf*::::::::::::::::N####:::NN
N:::::::::::NN:::::::::::::::::::::N####~*mampf*
N:::::::::::NNN:::::::::::::::::::NN####N
N:::::::::::NN:N::::::::::::::::::N######
N:::::::::::N:::::::::::::::::::::N!#####
N:::::::::N::::::::::::::::::::::N!!###N
N::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N!!###NN
N::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N!!!!!NN
NN:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N!!!!!N:N
NN::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N!!!!!!N:N
NNN::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N!!!!!!N::N
NN:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N!!!!!N:::N
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N!!!!!!N:::N
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::*mampf*::::N
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N!!!!!N::::::N
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N!!!!!N:::::::N
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N!!!!N:::::::::N
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::NNNNN:::::::::::N
N::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N:::::::::::::::::N
N::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N::::::::::::::::::N
N::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N:::::::::::::::::::N
N:::::::::::N::::::::::::::::N::::::::::::::::::::N
N::::::::::N:::::::::::::::::NN::::::::::::::::::::N
N::::::::::N:::::::::::::::::NNN::::::::::::::::::::N
N::::::::::N:::::::::::::::::N:NN::::::::::::::::::::N
N::::::::::N::::::::::::::::N::::NN:::::::::::::::::::N
N:::::::::::N:::::::::::::::N::::::NN::::::::::::::::::N
N:::::::::::N:::::::::::*mampf*::::N:::::::::::::::::::N
N::::::::::::N::::::::::::NN::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N
N:::::::::::::::::::::::::N::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N
53
N::::::::::::::::::::::::NNNN::::::::::::::::::::::::::::N
N:::::::::::::::N::::::::N NNN::::::::::::::::::::::::::N
 Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski

NE ver Lonely Again

Diagnostic Tools for the New Millennium

The future is already here. The third millennium has star- with seduction, role-playing, but also with loneliness, the
ted. This time, politicians and economists have saved us virtual, paranoia and a blind faith in technology.
a lot of work and have already instigated the revolution
themselves. They have invented the computer society for It was possible to see the first results of their research
us and are putting absolutely everything on the net. We at Knstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin in December. Besides
stand by astonished, not knowing whether to be de- the several parts of the multimedia installation
lighted at so much information, or to worry in face of our in the gallery room, there is also a website:
society's completely new structure. <http://www.icf.de/starrs/toolcorphome.html>

In this new world we have endless free time; and so that In their choice of metaphors, the lovingly designed gra-
we do not get bored, there is the data highway. This not phics of the website refer to mechanical tools.
only brings "interactive" television (video on demand) Screwdriver, hammer, pliers and drill serve as symbols
and radio (radio on demand) into our homes, but at last concealing the instruments of the future. Fuzzy Love
http://newweb.banff.org/projects/starrs/starrs&cmielewski.html

we also have unlimited opportunities to learn (telelear- Diagnostics involves four Quicktime collages, each play-
ning), to shop (teleshopping) and to be treated for fully relating objects in everyday use to tools of techni-
illness online (telemedicine). cal communications and surveillance in diagram form. The
Paranoid Poetry Generator gives the viewer his own

Besides these, already very welcome possibilities, we also opportunity to be active; to contribute to his own perso-
have the ideal way of ensuring that we need never be nal paranoia in the form of brief sentences. Before the
lonely again. Online dating is the key word, and it finds personal data is sent, the obligatory warning is given -
the ideal partner for all situations.... intensifying paranoia - that the form is being sent out by
e-mail, revealing the sender's address to the recipient.
The Australian artists Josephine Starrs and Leon In addition, it is pointed out that the data conveyed is not
Omielewski have concerned themselves with precisely encoded, so that the sender should avoid sending deli-
this scenario. Their starting point is the presumption cate or private information by this means.
that life in the new millennium will demand completely
new capabilities from us: "Only those with a complex and The largest part of the website is Fuzzy Love, the oppor-
exact set of tools will have free time." tunity to register for a partner service. The work suggests
that affairs over the net will be the preferred vehicle for
After the close of the post-humane, post-optimistic and love in the future, and a comprehensive catalogue of que-
post-ideological 90s, the human psyche will require new stions by which the aspiring member introduces himself
orientation and new support. The everyday life of each has been assembled. Besides harmless questions, like
person is shaped by use of the new technologies, his ex- for example: "what do you hope to gain from a net liai-
periences are manipulated and media dominated. Their son?", there are far more tricky ones concerning sexual
artistic work begins at this interface between the human predilections and preferred body fluids. The remarkable
psyche and technology. It involves a game with desire, thing about this form is that the person questioned is

54
neither called upon to give his/her name, only a nickna- me the loser. In addition, he must give details of his
me, nor is there any opportunity to reveal his/her sex. A most private desires in public, and he may well be temp-
modest pointer to erotic net relationships? How libera- ted to present himself in a different way to the approach
ting will these masks, behind which we indulge in ero- he would adopt alone in front of his computer.
tic role-play concealing our true identity, really be? Before
this private information is sent, the warning increasing By contrast, the installation Paranoia only offers space
paranoia again appears. for one viewer from the outset. A metal sculpture, to
which the user must draw very close in order to see and
The disappointing thing about the website, although this to hear anything at all, almost completely conceals the
is of course part of the concept, is that the finding of part- technical intestines. Only the monitor can be seen through
ners does not take place online; that is, the user can only a slit. It is operated by a tracking ball mounted at the front.

feed in his own data, not read off information. To do this, This isolated, apparently completely private form of inter-
he must make an effort and visit the installation in the action leads to a huge variety of paranoia being brought
gallery. But before he can finally read the information and onto the screen. Texts from the paranoia generator and
choose a suitable partner here he must - no, not pay, as shocking film sequences give the viewer the impression
is usual with a dating service - have already given in his that he is himself a non-participating observer until sud-
own data, without which he has no access. A straight denly - in the final image - he sees himself on the scre-
deal, information for information. en, filmed by a hidden camera.

The spatial realisation of the two interactive installati- So the diagnostic tools are really only a forgery. The
ons is based on differing concepts. The Fuzzy Love Dating artists gain our attention by using slogans and popular
Service is regularly updated with new data from the high technology aesthetics. But their relationship to
website and the installation, and runs on an ordinary com- these appears to go no further than the ambivalence
puter - placed on a table - and a printer which prints out between fascination and criticism. Certainly the Tools do
the desired information. This concept means that the pri- not fulfil their promise. But they obviously demonstrate
vate interaction between man and machine is transpo- our desire for usable aids, a desire which cannot be
sed into a public room. There is no longer the cozy secu- satisfied - and that focuses our attention.
rity of anonymity in front of a monitor, but a public pre-
sentation distorting our usual behaviour and our answers. Text by Cornelia Sollfrank

The person holding the mouse automatically mutates

into a performer and acts on behalf of all the visitors. As
a performer, the user is not only responsible for the audi- First published in BE Magazin #5, May 1998, by
ence's entertainment, but also responsible to the artists Knstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
and their work; he must convey what the work has to offer. contact: <[email protected]>
If he is awkward or uncertain, the user may easily beco- Many thanks to the translator: Lucinda Rennison

55
 Debra A. Solomon

the_li ving
background concepts the_living
To aid the reader not yet immersed in digital culture in In the summer of '97 D.A. Solomon was driven to
understanding the nature and context of this project, I shall create the digi-persona the_living because she became
first introduce a few background concepts. absorbed by the notion that our society has of the digi-
tal world. Since the mainstreaming of science fiction in
the digi-persona the popular media, we are exposed to a myriad of power-
Anytime we appear in the digital world, from the simple ful images, literature and cinema that portray a future in
answering of an email, to taking part in a chat, we do so which humans are equally present in both physical and
in the form of our digital persona. This persona is not a digital worlds. The project of the_living is an attempt to
mirror of who we are in the physical world, and is unlikely force the facts, to bring this image of the future into the
to be as complex. Nevertheless it is always the only present. Solomon created this digi-persona so that she
presentation of ourselves which others see when they might begin to experience the 'future' presented to her
encounter us in an on-line environment. in the popularized science fiction of the present, as a
seamless digital and physical existence.
This digi-persona is formed not unlike our physical per-
sona, by the environment in which it appears and by our the_living as a digital character embodies the dream of
ability to control the impression that we make upon the total connectivity; she is a veritable connectivity hero. Her
other. Whether we do nothing to control the presen- live performances are rituals in blurring the borders bet-
tation of this digi-persona or become absorbed creating ween the physical and the on-line worlds. the_living
new or several digi-personas appropriate to our different continually appears in a highly engaging physical situa-
social situations, the fact remains that this digi-persona tion while interacting by broadcasting a semi-fictive
always exists and is our sole albeit inadvertent repre- video and chat narrative to the audience in the Video
sentative on-line. Conferencing Environment. In past performances she
has been seen with her laptop at the bottom of the
the video conferencing environment swimming pool, boating on the Amsterdam canals, and
The proposed project, the_living, is about a digi-perso- pedaling in a swan boat on the River Fulda in Kassel all
na that has been created solely for the digital environ- the while interacting with the other participants in the
ment. The project will take place in the public cultural Video Conferencing Environment. In other performances
space Internet, in a Video Conferencing Environment. In she imitates the 'fixed camera perspective' style of CU-
the initial research stages of this project the digital per- SeeMe video by sending pre-recorded fixed camera sce-
sona the_living appeared at several video conferencing nes to her audience thus completely blurring what is
environment locations (CU-SeeMe1 reflectors2) giving perceived to be the 'live image.'
numerous performances and experimenting with the
live3event in this most interactive of all digital spaces. Living, communicating, creating and being part of a live-
http://www.the-living.org

experience herself the_living attempts to 'be in the pre-

Although originally developed to enable remote sent' while simultaneously relaying her experience to her
audio/visual communication between academic resear- remote audience through streaming video and chat.
chers, the individuals who now frequent the on-line spa- the_living is hyper living, living more than once, at once.
ces that constitute the Video Conferencing Environments
are by and large 'work lurks,' constantly observing the the project goal and proposal
small windows of video and chat that appear on their In the future will the richness and the diversity of your
monitors while they attend to the primary tasks of their life on-line equal or exceed that of your life in the phy-
working day. They work in one physical environment (the sical world? The goal of the project is two-fold:
office) but socialise in the digital environment. 1. To artificially bring the future into the present by
creating a year long seamless interaction for audience-
It is important to mention that this culturally rich envi- participants with digi-persona the_living in the digital
ronment has not yet been adequately explored as a place world. This will be realised by setting up a CU-SeeMe
where one can create, observe and exhibit art. the_living reflector where the_living will broadcast continually and
project anticipates a paradigm-shift. By exploring and vali- where the the_living community will gather to genera-
dating the concepts of a digital living experience, of te key narrative elements for a live, ever unfolding, on-
having a rich and varied cultural life on-line unparalle- line science fiction drama. (see below: a seamless futu-
led in the physical world, a new visual culture, a new noti- re now)
on of the concept digi-persona is being created. 2. To create a working chronicle of digital culture.
1) CU-SeeMe is a certain 'brand' of reflector browser, just as Netscape is a certain 'brand' of web browser. A browser enables the viewer to view and interact in the particular environment,
whether it be the World Wide Web, or the Video Conferencing Environment.

56 2) A reflector is a streaming video and chat server 'reflecting' back to the participants a continual stream of concurrent chat and moving image. A reflector is similar to a web server in that
it serves back to the viewer digital information. It is different in that a web server serves back one page to many viewers (one to many) while a reflector continually updates a visual space
to which many participants are contributing (many to many).
the_living will take a three staged trip to visit the birth- tance of personas), and Australia (to investigate the
places of digital mythology. The project creates a media- roots of crossover culture). The project's mobile activi-
ted interactive space where participants wittingly (and ties will come full circle with the final investigative trip
unwittingly) contribute to a thorough and archived visual to a number of European locations. Emphasis during this
history of digital culture. (see below: a working chronicle final phase of the project will be placed on the
of digital culture) Netherlands and former Yugoslavia where the roots of
hacker-culture and culture-hacker mythology lie.
a seamless future now
The itinerary of this trip has been optimalised to inclu-
What would it take for an artist to curate her life into de physical locations and individuals that are or have been
24 hours a day of broadcast quality visual and nar- instrumental in forming our image of the future as humans
rative? What would need to happen in this life for it with and within the digital world. the_living will gene-
to become engaging and valuable to others? rate narrative for a continually unfolding on-line perfor-
mance, a working chronicle of digi-culture, by visiting
What would it be like to live for a year as a digi-per and interacting with key people and locations on the
sona, living this digital life so thoroughly that ones itinerary. The physical locations, the issues and the inter-
perception of the digital reality as compared to the actions that the_living makes with her surroundings will
physical world becomes entirely readjusted? be reflected in an unfolding fiction in the Video
Conferencing Environment, but a journalistic approach will
No artist has yet attempted to live in a reality presented be patently avoided. The emphasis in the Video
in such movies as Johnny Mnemonic, or in the William Conferencing Environment will be placed upon world buil-
Gibson novel Idoru. Through project the_living, Solomon ding through video and chat, personal e-mails, and
would like to force this future of seamless integration bet- instant messaging. Together with the participants
ween the physical and digital world into the present, by the_living will create a year-long interactive fiction.
going on-line continually for a year: 24 hours a day, 7 days Because of its accessibility during and after the project
a week as the digi-persona, the_living. With an impres- this fully archived video (1 yr. real-time video format
sive mobile setup; a fully equipped laptop able to send 160 x 120) and chat will effectively become a working
streaming video and chat, and a camera fully equipped chronicle of digital culture.
with camera-person, the_living will broadcast a fictive
visual and chat narrative accessible for complete inter- Please read the itinerary index or visit the link page of
action to everyone on-line from her CU-SeeMe reflector. the website (www.the-living.org) for more information
The video will also be accessible from her website. about the proposed locations.

what is fan fiction

The emphasis during this year is on ACTION. Outside, on-
the-go. It is notable that Solomon will set up conditions Although most locations will be planned and arranged
for curating her own surroundings into a broadcast qua- ahead of time, there will be room left for the unpredic-
lity live video and chat stream for the duration of the pro- table. A heated reaction to one unfolding story will result
ject. the_living coins the phrase, Using my Flesh-holders in a desirable and unexpected turn of events. Maybe the
body as an Experience Conductor... Whereas other pro- reflector parti-
jects in the web environment (Ana Voog, Jennifer Ringley) cipants will
have created voyeuristic spaces where one individual or come up with a
artist-performer presents her work, project the_living new location,
distinguishes itself by providing a mediated interactive or know of
space in which a new visual culture can develop and some bizarre
where a new audience/participant relationship will exist. research-team,
which may
change the iti-
a working chronicle of digital culture
nerary. The
the_living project creates a mediated interactive space constant stre-
where participants will live a richer on-line life. They will am of visitors
actually be participating by generating and continuing the through the
narrative. CU-SeeMe re-
The roots of digital culture and the mythology surroun- flector will not only bear witness to this real life account,
ding it, lie not in computers or computer networks but in but will actually be instrumental in its' creation, facili-
Hollywood-like images, or rather Marin County California tating many of these meetings and hopefully a vast array
movie studios, San Francisco Bay Area science fiction lite- of other locations which THEY deem essential to this
rature and writers, and the bandwagon nerd culture of ongoing work. the_living (and her camera-person) are
Silicon Valley. To ensure a rich (visual) narrative, the_living dependent upon them not only for her unfolding narrati-
will make a 'pilgrimage' to the birthplaces of digital ve, but as well for traffic directions and accommodation
mythology. The initial stage of this trip begins on the West in strange cities and backwaters.
Coast of the United States and follows a route along the the_living is shareware, and without interaction from the
southern border going north at the Eastern Seaboard. Final on-line community, the_living will be similar to a weak
destination: Silicon Alley (a section of NY City where most tamagotchi.
digital initiatives are located). This initial trip will be fol- Stichting the_living Barentszplein 3 III 1013 NJ Amsterdam
lowed by others to Japan (to investigate the social accep- tel. 020 6240908 [email protected]
3) In the Video Conferencing Environment 'participants' gather to chat and send each other live video almost exclusively tapped from their physical surroundings. This environment is well
loved because of the eye-contact made possible by the streaming video. It enables the participants to see one's conversation partner reacting to the conversation or discussion. Because
people in this environment must always chat 'live,' it is always assumed that the accompanying video is 'live'.
57
 Kerstin Weiberg

dona matrix
DONA MATRIX is a character I created in 1994 and per- Genitals matter -- as they are basically used to define
formed for two years in the context of two different net- a person as belonging to a certain group, demanding beha-
working environments and performances. vior according to the social common sense. The defini-
tive operation makes the difference between a
DONA MATRIX does not exist autonomous. It is an essen- Transvestite and a Transsexual. Not just according to
tial part of. German law only the surgical incision completes the
DONA MATRIX works as a new identity.
mediator between the flesh and
the machine world. My personal perception of DONA MATRIX can be de-
scribed as inter-gender.
The Body as Interface DONA
MATRIX reflects the human per- The name DONA MATRIX has got a female connotation
son as integral part of the machi- being generated as a part of an environment naturally
nesociety. dominated by a female view on the body just due to the
fact of having been realized basically by women. Matrix
DONA MATRIX is translating -- besides the electronic reading of the term -- also refers
information. to the female physical determination to be the source to
generate life.
DONA MATRIX is able to be
changed, able to change, able to
be manipulated, able to mani- SANCTUS, the profaned body
pulate.
DONA MATRIX was brought to the world provoked by
the concept of Rosa Sanchez for the project SANCTUS,
DONA MATRIX is bound to the the profaned body of the Barcelona
network, lying, cabled to a based interdisciplinary artist group
computer system. She is cover- KONIC Thtr I have been working with
ed with thick black since 1990. SANCTUS, the profaned
rubber carrying contact pads body had been produced in 1994 for
with which sounds can be trig- the Life Arts Department of the ICA
gered when DONA MATRIX is (Institute of Contemporary Art) London,
touching them with her and then constantly had been trans-
http://www.snafu.de/~w e i b

sensor gloves. The skin close- formed and expanded until

suit's solely opening shows summer 1995.
the vagina of the performer.
Her communication ability is The project has been developed along
reduced to the perception and the concept of:
production of sound which is
generated and modulated Body - Sex - Society
making contact via midi trans-
fer with the computer. During an The performance was guided by
advanced phase of the perfor- certain principles:
mance the two androgynous - the distinctive sexual definition:
performers connect to DONA male - female - and their aberrations
MATRIX, and modulate the (transgender etc)
sound using the electric resi- - observing - being observed
stance of their bodies. - role and control

58
 Especially in the atmosphere of shyness when nearly no
The complexity of the technical environment is hard to interaction at all happened, and the people stayed in the
describe here. It was based on the ideas of most distant corner in order not to get in touch with the
Processing text provocating performers, someone or a small group came
Processing image up to me and overreacted, touching my body, moving my
Processing sound arms and trying to reach into my suit -- mostly discussing
and the integration of the visitors: if I was real or a mechanical puppet. Feels strange, of
by image course, being perceived as not human. But more I was
by interpretation reduced to a state of reactive presence and bound to
by participation: ritual gestures of communication. I was not able to cross
- sending text the border.
- speaking text
- manipulating DONA MATRIX and provoking reaction When I entered DONA MATRIX it was often horror and
- by their confrontation with the performance of then I felt like deep diving. When I had to leave it, it was
Bridge Markland (guest performer summer 1995) like waking up, like crossing to another world. I only
could stand the claustrophobic situation when I entered
In the final state the environment SANCTUS, the profaned a state of calming down close to meditation. I adapted
body formed a complex network of observation came- to the machine and its signals and learned to react to them
ras inside and outside of the performance space and at and find my *life* within those signals. I was learning
the public toilets of the gallery, of which images had been a new language.
screened by a video wall inside the performance space
in the mode of a survey installation. Sound and image
generating computers were interacting with the behavior
of the public and the performers. A touchscreen-termi-
nal conveyed a.o. material of transgender research.
(During the time of its public appearance SANCTUS, the
profaned body went through a surprising history of cen-
sorship, especially in England and Germany, mostly con-
cerning the placement of cameras at the toilets.)

The Mechanism of Human Deletion

In the interactive computer installation and

performanceThe Mechanism of Human Deletion DONA
MATRIX is connected to THE SYSTEM, a terminal network
asking and collecting private data from the visitors,
acting transparent to all sort of influence coming from it.
THE SYSTEM uses information, rules and value (hierar-
chy) to create identity. DONA MATRIX uses the relation
to THE SYSTEM to construct personality. http://www.thing.de/future-perfect
DONA MATRIX interprets THE SYSTEM as the sum of the contacts of persons and organizations involved with the creation of the
visitor's activities at the terminals and A + B act as presented projects: provided information and material about the early
work of sexual science in Germany:
voices of the System's tools (rules, education, re-
volution ) The environment's visitors participate in Magnus Hirschfeld Gesellschaft
the concrete processing of the work, initiating certain Chodowiekistr. 41
CONNECTIONS to THE SYSTEM, to the performers as well 10405 Berlin
contact: Andreas Pretzel
as among each other and rearranging their contributed 030 - 441 39 73 / Grossbeeren 13A / Q 030 - 215 94 74
personal data. The analogy of the digital System and the
social System is projected as a network of personal and performer who collaborated in SANCTUS, the profaned body in
automatic interchange build on the interdependancy of summer 1995:
communication. Bridge Markland
Hermannstr. 220
As my personal experience with the performance was sub- 12049 Berlin
ject of a variety of questions I will mention some of my
artistic director/sound researcher and performers of KNIC Thtr
impressions here:
Rosa Sanchez / Alain Baumann / KNIC Thtr
My vulnerability acting as DONA MATRIX had been compte borrell, 130, 3 1
respected by the visitors. Though there were certain 08015 BARCELONA, Spain
exceptions.

59
 Cornelia Sollfrank

female extension

EXTENSION experts who are trained in traditional art, need an under-

standing of the new medium which is based on practical
In February of 1997 the Galerie der Gegenwart (Gallery experience. Without this understanding, the charac-
of Contemporary Art) of the Hamburger Kunsthalle teristics of net art fall victim to the aesthetic and eco-
(Hamburg Art Museum) was the first museum in the nomic considerations of the curators. This happened at
world to announce a net art competition. The event was Documenta X, where "net art" was presented predomi-
supported by Philips, the German nantly without any connection to the
news magazine, SPIEGEL, and their net.
website, SPIEGEL ONLINE. The name In the case of EXTENSION, it was
of this competition was EXTENSION, planned to upload the projects of the
and was meant to be an extension of artists onto the server of the art
the museum into virtual space. The museum. What would remain of
competition posed the question of works based on communication,
how traditional tasks of the museum, exchange and interaction with the
collecting, preserving, mediating, and user and are in a permanent process
researching, could be applied to art of change, or with works linked to
on the internet. other sites? In addition to that, the
call for contributions implied that the
The call for contributions to EXTEN-
internet and the World Wide Web
SION asked explicitly not for art on
were the same, and limited net art to
the net, but for net art. Traditional
automatically generated net art web art. What was left out were
works of art should not be represen-
works that use other protocols such
ted in digital format, but artistic works
as e-mail, muds and moos, as well as
that applied familiar art concepts,
context systems such as The Thing
such as "material" and "object" to the
and t0-netbase.
internet. The Gallery of Contemporary
Art entered a new territory with this
FEMALE EXTENSION
experiment, and at the same time
gained the attention of a world-wide
This problem became particularly
public.
clear with my contribution to EXTEN-
The announcement of EXTENSION SION. I simulated more than 200
met the Zeitgeist of the year 1997. international female net artists. Their
http://www.obn.org/femext

The established art world had started names were assigned to 7 different
to become interested in this new art nations. Not only did they have com-
form and tried to deal with it more or plete addresses with phone num-
less appropriately. Nobody wanted bers, but also working e-mail
to miss the hype, everybody wanted accounts on a number of different
to take advantage of the potential publicity and -- in the servers. I registered these "artists" for the competition
best case -- be the discoverer and supporter of a new art and got a password for each of them. The art museum
form. A subcultural phenomenon was about to be turned was happy about the large number of contributions, and
into high art. But still, the lack of a market potential of issued a first press release on July 3rd, 1997: "280 appli-
this new art form posed great problems for the art world. cations - Two thirds are women". A number of print
Net art had to conform to the needs of the market, or the media published this news tidbit, and disseminated the
art world had to change. surprise and the joy about the high number of women.

Typical for this development is the lack of competence I proceeded to produce net art in an appropriate quanti-
and the insecurity of those who show, curate, categorize ty. Using a computer program that collected HTML-ma-
and judge net art. To deal adequately with net art, those terial with search engines on the World Wide Web and

60
recombined this data automatically, the net art projects scribes a group of artists, activists and theorists that star-
were generated. These projects were uploaded with the ted to meet the male dominance in cyberspace in an unu-
names of the "artists" onto the server of the museum. sual fashion in the last couple of years. We use the
Again the museum expressed great satisfaction in their potential of the term CYBERFEMINISM that arises from
press release: "On the closing date on June 30th, 120 its contradictory and undefined nature. These contra-
MegaByte of net art had been submitted. 96 of the artists dictions didn't develop out of the fusion of CYBER and
were from Germany, 81 from the Netherlands, 28 from FEMINISM, but are already inherent in the two terms. The
the US, 27 from Slovenia, 26 from Austria and the rest fusion of these two terms creates additional confusion.
from GB." An important strategy of CYBERFEMINISM is the use of
irony. Irony is about humor and seriousness. Only with
Apart from the higher probability to win a prize with this irony the contradictory views can be joined. All these
intervention, I also took "Internet as material and object", diverse approaches are necessary and important and
the theme of the competition, particularly seriously. create a productive tension. That's why CYBERFEMI-
Unfortunately, my attempts were not met by success. I NISM is not just a rhetorical strategy, but also a politi-
did not get a prize for this automatically generated net cal method.
art. Even though two thirds of the participants were
women, the three money prizes went to male artists. A new concept of politics is needed. The methods of
earlier decades don't work anymore. An expanded con-
The jury that consisted of the art historians Prof. Dr. cept of politics has to contain the possibility of both
Uwe M. Schneede and Prof.Dr. Dieter Daniels, the artists paradox and utopia. It has to be in opposition, able to
Dellbrgge & deMoll and Prof. Valie Export, as well as argue from different perspectives, and at the same time
Spiegel editor Rainer Wrtmann had faced a difficult task. make meaningful political action possible. A concept of
They were surprised by the apparently meaningless flood politics that simulates politics, while being politically
of data and didn't get the idea behind it. On the day the effective at the same time. With this concept of politics,
winners were announced, I issued a press release that we approach art.
revealed my contribution. Nobody had discovered my
intervention until then.

I could have never realized FEMALE EXTENSION on my "Hackers are Artists -- and Some Artists are Hackers"
own. Therefore I would like to thank the network that
helped me: Konrad Becker and Herbert Gnauer (t0.net- A conversation between Tilla Telemann and Cornelia Sollfrank
base, Wien), Wolfgang Staehle and Gisela Ehrenfried-
Staehle (The Thing, New York), Heath Bunting, Rachel Tilla Telemann: "Female Extension," your intervention of
Baker and Steve Mynott (irational.org, London), Luka the Net art competition, "Extension", held by the Hamburg
Frelih (ljudmila.org, Ljubljana), Neil de Hoog and Andreas Galerie der Gegenwart aroused quite a bit of attention.
Broeckmann (V2, Rotterdam), Geert Lovink (Digitale Staad What was the initial idea behind "Female Extension"?
Amsterdam), Michael van Eeden (Society for Old and
New Media, Amsterdam), Rob Bank and Walter van der Cornelia Sollfrank: Actually, I wanted to crash the com-
Cruijsen (desk, Amsterdam), Barbara Aselmeier and Karl petition. I wanted to disturb it in such a way that it
Heinz Jeron (Internationale Stadt Berlin), Tilman would be impossible to carry it out as planned.
Baumgrtel, Knut Johannsen (surver.net, Hamburg).
TT: Why?
CYBERFEMINISM
CS: Because I thought it was silly that a museum would
My piece FEMALE EXTENSION is a typical example for stage a Net art competition. For me, Net art has nothing
cyberfeminist activity. The term CYBERFEMINISM de- to do with museums and galleries and their operations,

61
 their juries and prizes, because it goes against the Dictionary" (see sidebar next page) which is an attempt
nature of Net art. Net art is simply on the Net; so to define that term, among others. For me, an important
there's no reason for a museum or for a jury that decides parallel between hacking and art is that both are play-
what the best Net art is. ful, purpose-free ways of dealing with a particular thing.
It's not a matter of purposefully approaching something,
TT: Do you still think that way? but rather, of trying things out and playing with them with-
out a useful result necessarily coming of it.
CS: Basically, yes. But I'm afraid
this development can't be stop- TT: Many spectacular hacks result in the destruction of
ped. Net art is on the verge of computers, or at least, a crash. With this in mind, do you
changing completely. It still hap- see a parallel between your destructive impulse and
pens on the Net, but this need hacking?
for completed, whole works
which can be sold, which have CS: Hacking does not mean first and foremost destroy-
a certain definable value, which ing. Today computer hackers place the greatest value on
can be attributed to an identi- the fact that they're well-behaved boys who simply like
fiable artist, and the establish- to play around and discover the weakest points of systems
ment of authorities who do the without really wanting to break anything. At the same
evaluating and who deal in Net art -- we won't be able time, hackers can induce unimaginable damages. But at
to ignore these developments. Net art will evolve in this the moment, it's really about the playful desire to prove
direction, and away from what it was in the beginning. to the big software companies just how bad their pro-
grams actually are. At least they're trying to push their
TT: Where did the aggressive image more in this direction.
impulse to crash the competiti-
on come from? Regarding my own action, it does have more to do with
disturbance than destruction. I couldn't actually destroy
CS: I simply am that destruc- "Extension" any more than I could inflict any serious
tive. I had the feeling that they damages to the Galerie der Gegenwart, but I was never-
didn't know what they were theless able to toss a bit of sand into the works. Everything
doing. They just wanted to pro- did not actually fall apart, but a few people did have to
fit from the hype surrounding spend a considerable amount of time looking at a lot of
Net art without truly investing trash/garbage... etc. This did disturb the trouble-free
in it. That's what I wanted to course of the competition.
shake up, and with this distur-
bance, call attention to the fact TT: Another aspect of hacking is that it does seem to
that it's not as simple as that. attract people who enjoy the intellectual challenge of
Net art is not just about clean- creatively working around limits.
ly polished Web sites; it might very well have something
to do with mean, system-threatening actions of distur- CS: Yes, hacking does have to do with limitations, but even
bance, too. more with norms. That's another parallel with art. The
material that art works with are the things that con-
TT: The action was seen by many as a "hack"; "Die stantly surround us. The only thing art actually does is
Woche" (a German newswee- break the patterns and habits of perception. Art should
kly) even named you "Hacker of break open the categories and systems we use in order
the Week". Do you see yourself to get through life along as straight a line as possible.
as a hacker? Everyone has these patterns and systems in his or her
head. Then along comes art: What we're used to is
CS: No, I'm an artist. But if you disturbed, and we're taken by surprise. New and unusual
take a closer look at the term patterns of perception offer up the same things in a
"hack", you very quickly disco- completely new context. In this way, thought systems are
ver that hacking is an artistic called into question. And only the people looking for this
way of dealing with a computer. are the ones who are interested in art at all.
So, actually, hackers are artists
-- and some artists also hap- TT: Would you say that there are as many well-defined
pen to be hackers. conventions involved in an art competition as there are
in computer programs and that you have subverted these
TT: What does the term conventions with your action?
"hacking" mean for you?
CS: Yes, that, too. The material I'm working with in
CS: There's something called the "Hacker Jargon regard to "Female Extension" is, on the one hand, the

62
Internet, but also the traditional means of art distributi- CS: It has less to do with the information itself and much
on: the museum, the competition, the jury, the prize. more to do with just how open systems are. The infor-
mation itself is constantly changing. There's always new
TT: If you wanted to disturb the competition, why didn't information. Much more impor-
you hack the server the art projects were stored on and tant are the hierarchies of
erase everything? Or disturb the awards ceremony, for systems, what's accessible to
example? whom. Hierarchies are esta-
blished with passwords and
CS: That's "electronic civil disobedience". In a way, I did codes and so on. These have to
my demonstrating on the Net because it had a greater be broken by hackers again and
effect. My action wasn't truly destructive. I didn't break again. Because of this, hierar-
anything; on the contrary, I was actually very productive. chies have to be restructured
Instead of destroying data and information, I used auto- over and over, and vertically
matic production to see to it that there was more data structured systems are rebuilt
so that the works sent in would be harder to find. horizontally. This is also the
decisive difference between the
TT: Isn't it something of an affirmation of a system when distribution of art and Net art.
someone tries to get into the system, whether it be a com- Art distribution is a hierarchical
puter system in the case of the hacker or a competition system, so it's vertically structured. I can't just hang my
in the case of an artist? Wouldn't it be more consistent art work in a museum. But I can go to the Net and "hang
to do the disturbing from the outside? up" my Web site, for example.

CS: No, you can disturb far more effectively from the insi- TT: Of course, that's precisely
de than from the outside. Producing a flow of data has what so many artists found so
a considerably greater effect than standing out in front interesting about the Internet
of the museum with a sign reading, "Down with in the beginning. But in the
Extension." meantime, it's even the
people who deal with it pro-
TT: One thing hackers emphasize again and again is that fessionally can't keep an over-
besides influencing social developments which only an view of everything that's going
elite group can follow anyway, access to sensitive infor- on in the field of Net art be-
mation is really at the core of what they're up to. Is that cause there's so much of it. A
also somewhat related to what you're doing? paradoxical situation has deve-
loped: Precisely because "every-
WHAT IS A HACKER? one is an artist" on the Internet,
1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of pro- it's especially important that
grammable systems and how to stretch their capabi- Net artists establish some sort
lities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn of relationship with art institutions in order to gather some
only the minimum necessary. sort of recognition...
2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessive-
ly) or who enjoys programming rather than just theo- CS: The only function of an art museum I can accept on
rizing about programming. the Net is that of establishing a context. Which means
3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. that I don't just put my Web
4. A person who is good at programming quickly. site out there where no one can
5. An expert at a particular program, or one who fre- find it, but rather, I place it wit-
quently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hin a certain context, for exam-
hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and ple, an art server. Presuming
people who fit them congregate.) that it's a Web site at all, becau-
6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be se besides the World Wide
an astronomy hacker, for example. Web, there are many other ser-
7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of crea- vices and levels on the Net
tively overcoming or circumventing limitations. where art can take place. But
8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to dis- the art server shouldn't be an
cover sensitive information by poking around. Hence art institution with a curator.
`password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term
for this sense is cracker. TT: In a way, an art server is
the Internet's equivalent for pro-
Source: Hacker Jargon Dictionary ducer's gallery. That is, there are artists who run a ser-
http://www.netmeg.net/jargon/terms/h/hacker.html ver themselves and fill it up with their own ouvre. This
is fine for the artist, but it may well not be of any gene-

63
 ral interest to anyone else. And that's what curators are cyber and Net. But they've shown that they had absolu-
for: To be a "gatekeeper" that only allows Net art through tely no idea what that would actually mean in that ever
which will have a certain value for the general public and since the competition, there have been no more efforts
not just for the artist who made in this direction whatsoever. Since the awards ceremony
it. In my opinion, this filter fun- in September 1997, the Web site hasn't been updated.
ction is extremely important for
the art public... But if competent people were to work with a significant
museum on the idea of seriously collecting Net art, I'd
CS: Of course there are people approve. It'd be an incredible challenge, because not
who need this filter function only would the collection of works and the formulation
because they don't have the of theory be involved, but also a tremendous amount of
time or the desire to look hardware and software would be necessary in order to
around for themselves. But with be able to read the data according to technical standards
regard to "Extension," for exam- which go out of date within the shortest periods of time.
ple, there was nothing there So technical specialists who could handle the inevitable
that interested me. One should repairs and maintenance would also be necessary. But the
always be aware of just how museums are hesitant when faced with such a huge task.
elitist and questionable the Such a collection would have to have a very broad range
choices made by a museum actually are. and gather as much material as possible, which would also
necessarily mean that a certain evaluation and hierarchy
TT: There is the historical example of video, where the of the individual tasks would have to be created.
processes of canonization and the induction into museums
took place, processes which are TT: What you accomplished with your action is that the
probably on the verge of occur- Galerie der Gegenwart won't be dealing with Net art at
ring with Net art. What's actual- all anymore. Would you consider this a success?
ly so bad about the fact that
museums are dealing with Net CS: The idea of starting a collection of Net art with
art and trying to evaluate the "Extension" was put into cold storage, in a way. Now
various works? After all, that's they've offered Stelarc a residency. This compromise, that
the job of an art museum, to is, working with a single artist whose work is quickly com-
contribute toward the creation prehensible, is much more consistent, I think. With
of context and the formulation Stelarc, in terms of content, they are venturing out onto
of a canon. a new terrain, but it's still nevertheless compatible with
a museum.
CS: The motto for the museum
is: Collect, protect, research. A
TT: Your "Female Extension" reminds me of the contex-
museum that seeks to deal
tual art or the institutional critique of the early nineties.
seriously with Net art would have to collect Net art and
In the art world at the time, there was also this idea of
seriously consider all the consequences of just how this
focusing on and calling into question the conventions, the
art form is to be preserved and researched.
mechanisms of the creation of norms and canons. These
TT: Aren't you contradicting yourself? On the one hand, were questions which only interested those who had any-
you're saying that Net art only takes place on the Net and thing to do with art. Could it be said that your work was
that's where it should stay and essentially aimed strictly at the jury?
the museums should leave it
well enough alone, and yet, on CS: The jury was, of course, most immediately effected,
the other hand, you're saying although the members didn't realize at all that "Female
that museums should be collec- Extension" had anything to do with art -- all the better.
ting Net art... As for how much other people, for example, the artists
participating in "Extension," were effected by my action,
CS: If a museum were to I don't know. But I got a lot of feedback from people who
seriously take on the challenge weren't directly involved and for whom I drew attention
of collecting Net art, I could to an important problem, namely, the attempt to make Net
accept that. But I doubt that art museum-ready. Many Net artists don't know them-
that's what they actually have selves just how they should react to this and careen back
in mind. And what happened and forth between the underground and the professional
at the Galerie der Gegenwart is world. I don't have this problem because my work was the
a prime example. attack on the structure of the museum itself.

They simply wanted to quickly swim alongside the net.art (Translation: David Hudson)
hype, to sample a bit of the cream topping on all things

64
Sabine Helmers

enter hack mode

Pictures from a 7-min amiga Video

http://duplox.wz-berlin.de

65
66
67
 Quotes: The Jargon File,
http://www.ccil.org/jargon.
Photography: Dress-Photo by
Machtelt Garrels, IGUANA, Belgium.
Sabine Photo by selba. All other
photography by Sabine Helmers.
ENTER HACK MODE on WWW:
http://duplox.wz-berlin.de

68
Rena Tangens

Art
dAmbeublement
www.tangens.de

PUBLIC DOMAIN - topics, documentation and info on coming

events:
www.foebud.org

ZaMir network documentation

www.foebud.org/texte/presse/artikel

Information on /CL network:

www.cl-netz.de

Information on ZERBERUS and CHARON software:

www.zerberus.com

Pretty Good Privacy:

www.foebud.org/texte/publish/pgp.html

Text on androcentrism in the networks:

www.foebud.org/art/TEXTE/andororo.html

Wiwiwi-nangnangnang:
www.foebud.org/art/wiwiwi.html

http://www.foebud.org/art

contact:
Rena Tangens c/o Art d'Ameublement
Marktstr.18 D-33602 Bielefeld
Tel: +49-521-65566 Fax: +49-521-61172
e-mail:[email protected]

69
 Faith Wilding

Artist Statement

My art practice is complex and recombinant, and makes which encode our deepest fears, desires, and longings
use of whatever media best accomodates the subject in narratives of evolution, choice, idealization, immorta-
matter, content, and purposes of the project at hand. I lity and perfectibility. For different exhibition venues, I
work in many materials and formats including drawing, present different aspects of this project which includes
painting, printmaking, writing, artist books, performance, computer assisted prints on vellum; small paintings;
and electronic media. My recent mixed media collage writing; artist books; scuptural components; collabora-
works on paper, and my Rorschachprint based tive performance and WEB pages.
"wounds", "embryos" and "fetuses" for example, repre-
sent a cherished and longstanding committment to I'm interested in the transformational and pedagogical
drawing and printing as a way of exploring psychologi- possibilities of a radical artan art which uses beau-
cal and philosophical ideas and cultural phenomena in ty as a terrorist tactic, rather than an end in itself.
sensous visual materials and tactile embodied forms. I
think of these works as "recombinants", for they recom-
bine not only traditional media such as watercolor pain- Writings on Cyberfeminism by Faith Wilding and the
ting and meticulous ink drawing with the much newer Critical Art Ensemble:
methods of collage and montage, but they also speak of <http://mailer.fsu.edu/~sbarnes> or
the psychic state of the body today the recombined war <http://www.obn.org/cfundef/condition.html>
body, which has been violently cobbled together from
nomadic social, cultural, and political fragments. The
recombinant body, which is the subject of much of my
work, is an uneasy, monstrous depository of melancholic
historical fragments expressed as animal, human, orga-
nic, and machine parts. It is a body both beautiful and
strange in its monstrous (im)possibilities. I think of my
visual work as a kind of "applied theory" based in research
about contemporary social and cultural phenomena and
ideas. A recent project,Wall of Wounds, is an
example of such "applied theory". "Show your wound!"
is an imperative which seems to be the motivation
http://mailer.fsu.edu/~sbarnes

fueling TV and radio talkshow entertainment all across

America today.

Wall of Wounds seeks to comment on this situation

using sensuous printed stains and marks on skinthin
tissue paper to restore affect in opposition to the num-
bing spectacle of pain. At the same time it draws
attention to the consumption aspect of the talkshow
phenomenon, by inviting the viewer to acquire a perso-
nalized wound. I am currently very interested in random
and involuntary processes and in the ideas they give me
for consciously manipulated and developed images.

Embryoworlds is another example of the way in which I

combine theory and practice in my work. In this evolving
project, I comment on the new "assisted conception"
technologies, and on the effects of technoscience on
women's lives and bodies globally. This project has
everything to do with the languages of science and art

70
Vesna Jankovic

arkzin
Conversation between Faith Wilding and Vesna Jankovic Conference, and this conference is used basically by
(director of ARKZIN, an anti-war campaign magazin) women's groups in different parts of ex-Yugoslavia for
FW: Let's start by talking about what you are doing now exchanging the information, for organizing conferences,
with ARKZIN. As I understand it, the magazine started for just giving support to each other. Also an important
in l991 as a biweekly fanzine of the anti-war campaign. role was to keep us in contact with the outside world, I
You described it as a bastard form between politics and mean our partners in, especially, western countries. Last
high/low culture? December, for example, we organized a big petition for
media freedoms in Croatia and BBS was very important
V: Yes. Now the publication ARKZIN is combined of high to coordinate this action, which was organized simulta-
politics and grass roots initiatives, culture, sub-culture, neously in different towns. In a similar way it was used
putting a lot of attention on women's issues as well and in some previous campaigns for keeping the right to
it definitely had an important political role, also in pro- free, legal abortion. My experience is that Internet and
viding the counter information (during the war). During new medias can be used as a really strong political tool,
all these years we kept contact with the similar inde- supporting the grass roots initiatives and building the bro-
pendent medias in Serbia like Radio B 92, in Bosnia ader grass roots networks.
especially with the magazine Dani and Radio Zed. Actually
a great help to keep these communications and contac- FW: Yes, I agree. We spoke this morning about the fact
ts was our BBS, named Zamir which means "for peace," that there are really big differences between the diffe-
and which we established in '92 with the great help of rent countries in the meanings of Feminisms--in the mea-
our Western friends, especially friends from Bielefeld, and nings of Feminist action, and how women use the net.
also some other international volunteers from Poland, and The webgirrls, for example, presented the fact that they
Katherine Turnipseed from United States, who actually found women more and more wanted to meet on the web
played a very important role in teaching women how to socially, as a social connection, more so even than wan-
use this new media, new tool. Her project was Electronic ting particular technical information. That seemed to be
Witches and she really did a tremendous job in doing it. a particular use for women in Holland (whom they were
talking about); but what you're talking about in Croatia-
FW: So is there already a Cybefeminist movement in - and I suppose this is probably also true of some of the
Croatia? other Eastern European countries where the medium
V: Unfortunately I think it's still very hard to talk about was very much needed as an organizing, survival tool--
Cyberfeminism in Croatia. A lot of us are basically using there is a very different kind of use for it there. In fact,
e-mail and most of us women who are active are enga- this is something that Cyberfeminism really needs to
ged in different social and political activities. So still we think about and be very aware of, that we have actual-
are not so much present on the Internet and we are not ly a very tremendous power in terms of these instant
surfing the Internet, but I think the first steps to get fri- connections that we can make now internationally; in the
endly with the new technologies are made, and I hope way that we can call attention to various very critical
in future there will be more women's presence on the net. situations that women might be in. You mentioned the
situation in Algeria, what's going on there right now
FW: You told me some really interesting and important and what a big difference it could make there for Western
http://www.arkzin.com

things about how these BBS, these bulletin boards were media and Western women's groups to put a kind of
very influential in helping in the anti-war campaigns and watch, put an alert out over the Internet in much the same
how they actually linked people instantly, to organize them way that Amnesty International often does. I'm edito-
for actions and really get things started. Could you see rializing here I realize.... but, maybe you could give some
this kind of tactic as working for women in a particular further thoughts on that and some specific suggestions
way? from your experience on how this kind of organizing,
political organizing across borders, might be able to work
V: Yes, our BBS was important as I already said, in our for the cyberfeminists.
work with the magazine. It was important as a commu-
nication tool to keep the contact with the people we other- V: Well, my experience in living in a quite repressive
wise couldn't reach because telephone lines were bro- state is that our international connections actually saved
ken, but it was also important in keeping different peace, us from being arrested or having other big problems.
human rights, and especially women's initiatives com- Also, the second experience we made was the great
municating. Very soon after establishing Zamir BBS and help in our campaigns for keeping abortion legal. We got
Zamir Network we built up the Zamir Women's big support from especially Swiss and German women's

71
 groups and so this making internal problems internatio- issue of public space and private space, more in connec-
nal, or putting them in the international context, made tion with art, but very soon it got into a political discus-
our struggle much easier and really kept us in a much safer sion because of the issue (at least it has been an issue
position. A month ago, I met a woman from Algeria, in America for some time) of how artists are being asked
who was a representative of a women's group in Algeria to make public art and to go into communities and so-
who are fighting to keep some basic rights in this new called public spaces to create work that in a way will
context they have there. (One of our other speakers) inspi- mediate between museums and certain communities
red me with the idea of how much easier it would be for, that are usually underrepresented: you know, they'll try
for example this group of women too, if they can get inter- to send a black artist into a black community, etc. There
national support, if they can inform the international are some real problems with the way artists are being
community immediately about the problems they are used as sort of public relations people for museums,
facing, about death threats they are facing, and also I was and the way that museums are giving funding to certain
thinking about possibility of the Internet as a tool by projects that really kind of cover up the fact that most
which some pressure to the governments can be made. public space is essentially lost to us for our use. It's all
So I'm definitely supporting (Babette's) idea of using the corporately owned pretty much, it's surveilled, it's con-
Internet as a political tool and using the Internet as a brid- trolled, it's there for the market place and not for peo-
ge which can bridge the gap between low and high tech- ple just to mingle and to meet and to have social relati-
nological countries; as a tool which can give the voice onships. The Internet could offer perhaps, a new kind of
to especially women in the third world. I consider it as public space although that too is very, very contested, and
actually a very important part of Cyberfeminist strategy. definitely not just provided freely, it has to be struggled
FW: I agree, and it reminds me of some of the things that for constantly. So, I was describing a situation that I
groups that I've been in have done already, using fax for think exists in America now in terms of public space
example as a tool-- sending zillions of faxes. You can real- and the way artists are being used and it's really some-
ly tie up a corporation's or a government office's fax thing that we're not perhaps as aware enough of as we
machines if everybody in the organization is alerted to should be. I really wonder if there is a comparable situa-
send continuous faxes, to a very crucial number. You can tion in Croatia. I mean, what about this issue of people
really throw some sand into the wheels there. As some being able to get together in public spaces and the fre-
of us were talking about last night, one of the things that edom of people just expressing themselves in their
we really need to be aware of too, is that the Internet is various ways? It seems like there would be some really
not owned by us, that it's not been kindly provided by cor- crucial problems there too.
porations for us to just have fun with, and put up our web V: Definitely there are many, many problems though they
pages, and play around with but, in fact it's actually a very are quite different than in the West. Still, the state has
contested zone; it's a very controlled, surveilled zone, and a very, very important and strong control over most of the
if we want to continue to use it for our own ends then civic and social sphere. [So] there are just a few small
we have to constantly be very creative about that and very islands, which I would like to call Temporary Autonomous
vigilant to maintain the small hold that we have on that Zones, where the independent social life is possible.
space already. That's something that we need to be very Actually what I'm busy with for years now and together
aware of as women too, because as women we need to with my colleagues there, is just to make these islands
think about claiming space, re-claiming space, claiming bigger and broader and more visible, though it's quite hard.
voices. One of the things we talked about was the pos- We have three TV channels and all three of them are state
sibility also of using the Internet as an educational tool owned and controlled though there are some magazines
for women and you were telling me about the way that but, we know that TV at the moment is the most influ-
you're beginning to organize with some women in Zagreb ential media. I also don't want to give up completely the
for women's education. Would you be interested in tal- fight to influence the existing institutions but I'm very, very
king about that a little bit? much in favor of creating our own spaces, our own insti-
V: Yes, just two years ago women's studies, a comple- tutions, our own autonomous zones where no censors-
tely grassroots program has started and also we got a hip or no control could be made.
lot of support in terms of books and information from our Cornelia: May I ask a question?
Western colleagues, and I was thinking actually about
subscribing women's studies on the Faces list just to make FW: Yes, please!
possible for students there to read part of discussion
C: I'm very much interested in your personal background.
which are going on and to get some important informa-
I would like to know how your personal life looked like
tion about books, about sites. Maybe it can inspire some
before the war and how it changed when the war star-
of them to get more involved in this new technology and
ted and how you got involved in the peace movement.
they'll start to experiment themselves. Also I see the role
of Internet as very important in breaking this very natio-
V: Well, I'm a sociologist, I was studying sociology in
nalistic state of mind which we are facing there. I am sure
Zagreb University and since '86 I was already involved
that people who are using it now, who are really beco-
in Green, Women and Peace initiatives in Croatia. At that
ming a part of a global village will definitely have a
time we were very much influenced by--besides all, the
much bigger amount of information and, I hope that for
radical theorists we could read about during our stu-
them it will be impossible to be obedient to the system,
dies--we were very much influenced by especially what
the regime as it exists now in my country.
was going on here in Germany with the Green Ecological
FW: I didn't warn you that I was going to ask you this que- movement; also with the Squatters Movement, with all
stion but. A couple of us were talking last night about the this blossoming of the alternative culture and somehow

72
that was my initiation in becoming a political animal or V: You are asking me about the future for the women in
becoming politically active. Then war started in '91, a Croatia? Actually, one very interesting thing has happened
group of us who were very involved in these different civic during these years of war (and this phenomenon is known
initiatives got together and said, "Ok, war is starting. Let's from the history as well) and this is that actually all
try to do something!" It was obvious that we cannot these different civic initiatives--not just women's initia-
stop the war at that stage but also obvious that war will tives and women's groups, but also human rights groups,
bring lot of social, political and economical changes and peace groups, most of them were led by women and
that it will be necessary to organize ourselves and to influ- actually, though the war is not a very pleasant experience,
ence some of these changes. How my life looked befo- somehow a lot of women got encouraged, and they real-
re the war and how it looked after the war started? Well ly started some projects, and are working still on deve-
it wasn't, actually, a very big change, my life just got more loping them. And what I think at the moment is impor-
intense, I just became more active, working more, and tant (there is no war situation anymore) is that I would
learning also much more... not like to see all these women falling back again to (let's
FW: You were telling me really interesting things yester- say) ordinary life, which means: life in which they will
day about the kind of training that the peace groups become invisible again. And I hope it won't actually hap-
undergo, the non-violent training, and the thinking about pen. Besides that, I would really like to see more women
the theory of it and also the practice of it . I think perhaps getting involved with these new technologies. I am per-
we don't know really, we're not so aware of that, at sonally also very excited about it and I hope that I will
least I'm not, in America, that this is going on. [And] it also have more time now, to just play with the Internet
would be really interesting for me to hear you talk about and to seewhat will come out of it.
that a little bit. FW: Are there any questions from any of you?
V: Yes, one of the first things we did as the anti-war cam-
paign was organizing the trainings for non-violent action Cornelia: I have another question. You mentioned you
and non-violent communication. Our first group whom we worked together with people from Bielefeld building up
contacted was German group Bund fr Soziale what was it exactly? You have a mailbox system, Zamir
Verteidigung, and actually it was a real discovery for Net. I would like to know what your experiences have
me to get in touch with all this theory, with also concrete been with women from the West or Western countries,
methods and techniques: how to do it! Very soon we got Germany especially, in terms of their cultural background
in contact with different groups, with different trainers and the difference in the role of women and the diffe-
and lots of them were willing to come and to give trai- rent background in Feminism. I'm sure that women in for-
nings to us. [And] I was actually very surprised how mer Yugoslavia have been brought up differently and
many people, ordinary people got interested in it and the have a very different system in their mind than we have
response was really good even in towns which were on here (in Germany). I would like to hear something about
the front line, which were for a long time under the shel- that.
ling, and still somehow it seems that it gave some hope V: Well, though there are definitely differences, especi-
to the people. Out of these trainings, several projects have ally in the fact that during socialism most of the women
developed, one of them was working in a small in our countries were working so they had economical
townPakrej, which was divided-part of the town was autonomy, but beside that the problem was this whole,
under Croation control, part of the town was under old patriarchal system, which is I guess even worse than
Serbian control. We were working there trying to do in the West. So there are differences, but my experien-
'social reconstruction,' we call it: actually to make the ce with working and cooperating with the women's
communications between people from both sides. It was groups from the West is actually quite positive. We
hard , it was tough job, but it worked very well, and it was could find a common language and we also could learn
a model which was later transformed or brought to something from experiences which were made by all
Bosnia, and now there are some small towns in Bosnia the women's groups here. You had twenty or thirty years
in which this model of work is applied. The other project of experience in organizing, in doing campaigns, founding
which came out of these trainings is Peace Studies. the houses for women victims of family violence, and all
Peace Studies are just starting officially this autumn. these experiences were quite valuable to us. Because of
Though we had organized for two years already, sort of this we could cope in better ways with some problems
one week events/workshops in which people who are which are part of natural group dynamics, conflicts which
active and who learned a lot through their engagement arise in every group, so it was easier for us-- it's a sort
and through trainings there, participated in dissemina- of natural phase in the development of the group. On the
ting this knowledge to just ordinary people who came and other hand, of course, we tried to relate to our own rea-
participated in these events. lity and to our own experience, but this communication
FW: I guess one thing we haven't really discussed that was, I must say, quite productive and I guess that also
much is what you think is the possibility for a media futu- women's groups here got something from it.
re for women in Croatia, and also it might be interesting
to hear what you think are the most pressing problems FW: Thank you very much, Vesna.
for women right now. I know there's many different
groups of women, and many different positions, and
economic backgrounds, in Croatia, but if you can make,
perhaps, some generalizations or comments it would be
interesting to hear.

73
 Corrine Petrus

webgrrls

Webgrrls is a very diverse group of women. About 17 I should explain what the idea of webgrrls is. Well, the
months ago, I was surfing the internet, looking for women idea was already there before we met. Aliza had foun-
on the internet, because I was interested to find other ded the first group. What we do is, we network. We have
tech-grrls on the net. I'm a computer programmer and wor- mailing-lists on the net. I have about 5 mailing-lists in
king in the field for quite a while, but I didn't know any Holland and one in Belgium. They have all different
female colleagues at all. So, when I got on the net, I was topics. Mainly we talk about computers. But some women
interested in finding out about other women. I wanted also wanted to chat about everyday life problems, and
to find out, if there are other women like me. I didn't find so I established an extra list for that. I was on it for 2 days,
a Dutch site, so I went to Aliza Sherman's site, located but i left very fast. You have to like it.
in New York. She had the first Webgrrl site, and I think
there was also an English group. I wrote an e-mail to Aliza The Webgrrl concept is, that everybody can become a
Sherman and asked her, if she knew about a Dutch group. webgrrl. The only thing you have to have in common
14 days later I got an answer from her in which she with the others is, that you have an interest in new
asked me to start this Dutch group. media. There are very different levels of involvement
and capacity, starting from just knowing how to open
Netscape and surfing the net to professional program-
mers and system engineers. On a Webgrrls mailing-list
you cannot ask a dumb question. Everybody is taking you
serious, so very simple facts are passing by, but also very
deep discussion for specialists.

In our meetings we all talk about our work, very different

topics, all kind of knowledge and we have fun. An impor-
tant part of the webbgrrls is the webgrrls site. The rea-
son why I started webgrrls, and what I think is most
important about the site, is the "who is who" part. On the
first meeting we talked about that we cannot find many
women on the net and that we want to make them visi-
ble. So 6 of us decided to introduce ourselves on the web.
Now we have almost 100 women in one year, who publis-
hed a lot of information about themselves on the net. You
I thought, no way. I'm a technician, I'm not interested in also can send them an e-mail. Many women who read
founding groups. But on the other hand, it was a reason it, can't wait to be on the site themselves and send in
to build a website. I decided to make the website, becau- immediatly their who-is-who-form.
se it might be the opportunity to find other women. Later
http://www.webgrrls.nl

I could hand it over to somebody else. Last year in May

I opened the website and two months later I had my first
Webgrrls meeting. I didn't know, where they were coming
from, but in June 1996 there were already 100 webgrr-
ls. We met in Rotterdam. 25 of them came there and we
talked about different topics. It was writers and journa-
lists and all kinds of women and we all talked about our
personal approaches to the internet. We were all very
enthusiastic about that new thing, because we all had
the need for talking to women, just to have the proof, that
we were not alone out there. For me the visibility of women on the net is the most
important thing. The last couple of months I'm trying to
go further with it by forming all kinds of groups. I formed

74
a programmers group, because I had a special program- Finally I would like to say something about Cyberfeminism.
ming problem and wanted to exchange about it. As a pro- I don't consider myself a feminist, but maybe I want to
grammer I do a lot of work for different companies, but call myself a cyberfeminist. There is one thing I like very
I do not have much presence on the net, with my work. much about Cyberfeminism and this is, that nobody
But I wanted to exchange about my work and so I star- knows what it is exactly. It has no boundaries yet. Maybe
ted this programmers group with the most nerdy girls. that is not important, but that is why I want to fit in there.
Every three weeks six of us meet to talk about special
programming problems and we are developping now a
common project. Mathilde is also in the group, and we
force each other to tell each other every three weeks, how
far we got. Each of us is doing a part of the project and
can choose, if she wants to do it in Java, VRML or wha-
tever she wants. We give each other as much knowled-
ge as we can.

Another thing is women and business. There are a lot of

women who have a talent. They are working for a com-
pany, but would prefer to start their own business. We
mix it together and slowly start to form little companies,
maybe on a small scale at first. I'm just testing the band-
with of everything, because I think women are always
much too modest. I always was much too modest, and
too shy. (I lost that somewhere on a longer line.) I had a
lack of confidence. I thought, who the hell is waiting for
me to do or put something out there? Nobody is interested We talk a lot about feminism on the Dutch mailing-list,
in that. and I know a lot of the webgrrls have not much sympa-
thies in that direction. Of course they are grateful for the
I rembered that yesterday, when Pit Schultz was talking merits and fights of the women before. But they think it
about nettime. I'm reading nettime for one year, but I never is over. Cyberfeminism can bring something different in
said something there, because I always thought: who the it. That's why I came here. I hope to find other women
hell is waiting for me to say something out there? There that are prepared to go out there and make the internet
are all those interesting people, with their interesting, their own, publish their texts, thoughts, websites. Do what
ideas, ideals. Who am I? He said that the reason why so ever they feel like.
few women post on nettime is also a lack of confiden-
ce. And I thought, he is right. It was the same with my http://www.webgrrls.com
first webpage, my first homepage. I was unsure what to http://www.webgrrls.de
say. But I got a lot of good reactions from people sending
me e-mails. So I got a lot more confidence. And now I
have this organisation. There are 850 members in Holland,
25 in Belgium, and I'm going to start in Luxembourg. I have Note from July 29th, 1998:
maybe other countries in my mind. In the meantime I have left Webgrrls to start a new
organisation. Tech Women, this a new organisation,
which will organise festivals and other activities. This is
not a group, like Webgrrls was, but a professional orga-
nisation. Tech Women has one important goal and that
http://www.tech-women.nl/

is to show women that work with technology, business-

women as well as artists.

The only thing I want with that, is to... I do it for myself.

I never thought that I could do something like that, run
a big organisation like that. As I told you, I'm learning
about my own boundaries and I'm searching for other
ways to do that more. And I hope everybody else is inspi-
red and think that they can also do so.

75
 Mathilde Mupe

female e volution
Scientists have found facts that indicate that female No wonder female computer nerds have to shout out loud,
primates were the discoverers and users of tools in the to get seen in such crowd. But computer science is young
history of mankind. The now almost extinguished and open for anybody male or female. With the internet
Chimp apes show cultural use and tradition of tools. the crowd of female nerds becomes more visible. I'm not
Somewhere along their evolution line among several the only women I always told my male friends. To make
groups different types of tools have come to use. The my point I joined the Webgrrls. With internet the social
females are the most dedicated users and teachers of computer face increased and likewise with the tele-
these tools. Looking at our own evolution the women must phone the use by females increased. Alas were the tele-
have somewhere in history laid these tools aside. phone was just a simple ten number device, the computer
Resulting in nowadays debates, why and how woman asks with never exhausted logic for more technical insight.
should come forward out of the untechnical shadow. Even before the internet a certain attitude with computer
malfunctions was known to be typical female. While
We are suppressed to long, have believed for too many male shout; I just don't get it. The device is designed
centuries too much myth about our incapacity with tech- wrong. Do I have to buy a new one? Female sigh;I
nology. Fact is also we are short of memory and making really do not understand computers. It does not work for
the same mistakes ourselves over and over again in me. I did such and so but then every time this stupid mes-
history. We saw how man could faster and more craft- sage appears, telling me I'm wrong. Could I've damaged
fully swing a hammer so let him have it, there are enough something?
other tasks to do. We entered the electronic era and
women were allowed to take jobs at telephone switch- Even though there is no muscle power required for com-
boards and other technical tasks. However now we are puter usage. And there for women should be equally
labeled as telephone addicts not technicians. Why is handy as men there is also a biological difference.
grandma's role at the switchboard so easily forgotten? Research to the influence of stress and health made
Why she stopped her career there is easy told. Yes clear that average women have a higher cortisol level in
woman had lower wages and yes they had care of the the blood then man. Cortisol is a product in the blood that
children. But new women should have stepped forward is produced by ACTH a brain hormone produced when
with increasing interest in the technology behind the experiencing stress situations. An increased level of
scenes. And that did not happen. I have never seen a Cortisol slows down the immune system of our body
female telecompany technician, they have sort of say and makes us vulnerable to diseases. With computers it
extinguished. comes to the point were we all get stressed when things
do not function as expected. Because most women have
But today we do things different. We have become alert a higher Cortisol level it is likely that they have an unmea-
on the female underdog role. Females have no longer the sured extra sensation of physical discomfort when their
mother role. Her income is equal to her male collea- created work is subjective to mystical computer errors.
gues. And we have entered the computer era with a This could be the answer why some women are eager
wide variety of new possibilities. Of course computers to reject computer knowledge especially with dreadful
are expensive, not something you just go out and buy with computer operating systems like Microsoft Windows.
a tight budget. One has first to find all a solid reason to
spend such an amount of money. But that can not be the But it might be time to understand that every time a
main reason why female and male computer nerds are syntax error appears on screen a pop-up window with
unequally presented. There are many women involved General Protection Fault number bla blah in such and so
with computers at the office, doesn't that give a spin off? or something likewise, one is offered a credit point. One
Think of working all day with a text processor in an is offered the opportunity to step further in computer
office returning tired at home and finding yourself knowledge. And the error is for 99.9% a result of the soft-
amongst rebellious children, because they had to look ware programmer not oneself.
after themselves too often. Logic thinking says: This
person is definitely not spending her holiday bonus on a Instead of cashing the offered credit point by investiga-
computer. Such person will resent to spend hours after ting the repetitive pattern and persistence and thus
office time in exploring and gaining computer know- origin of the bug, the computer is regarded as hostile. I
ledge. The army of data processing women outnumbers wonder how much women have a Microsoft operating
the legion of male computer users who just bought the system on their computer? And how much of these have
machine out of curiosity. This results in a large group of tried the program debug, delivered with the ms-dos
women who's status is more like a puppet on a string the operating system or Win95. The amount might be scary
role of 'the data doll', while the male are frequently small. While men have a tendency to impress friends with
focused on showing of and getting a taste of the action. (faked) computer knowledge or hardware terms. A hand-

76
ful of computer nerds is more and more overshadowed leads to the agony of erroneous clicking wrong hot spots.
by the female computer-at-the-office user and internet The software industry lacks women with sound under-
socializers. Social contact on the internet and browsing standing of software engineering and our quick under-
newsgroups shows few women on technical subjects. standing what makes a program human friendly. The
Prejudice lurks around the corner. Where a female once female touch like the irreplaceable concept of the ham-
was confronted with pleasant surprise reactions when mer.
she confessed her computer knowledge more and more
these reactions are intermixed with doubt. When com- Governments also try on the side line to let the women
panies have a vacancy for an internet specialist there are equally participate in computer knowledge. However in
already signs on the wall. A blond woman can see the the school system there is a gap. It does not consider the
company visiting her web-site with blondine photo but fact that interests and ease of learning differs in phases
their answer is silence. Once that company should have in life. While someone might be more focused on
benefited from the free minded computer scene open atti- social life at teens it does not rule out the technical
tude towards women. Now female specialists are more capacity someone might have at later age. Taking on tech-
and more confronted with disbelief. How much longer are nical matters at later age also require more persistence
we women about to wait, to see the proof of how we and organization. Most people have trouble taking such
participate in screwing up the gender equal trust situa- step at age of 25 or 40 leaving them with a lack of know-
tion with computer knowledge? Isn't it about time any ledge and missed opportunity. With computers this might
woman who is working with computers tries as hard as easily be pardoned because todays hot knowledge is
she can to master the machine she trusts with her work? tomorrows sorrow. But still a basic understanding of
Isn't it about time females accept their example role. If what has been bought in the computer shop, might be a
a young girl learns from her mother computers are fru- step in positive direction to explore things further. We
strating. And she has a hard time getting along with have the internet now at our convenience and an oppor-
these lessons at school, what else can she do then also tunity to create the new home office style industry. All
get frustrated with computers? It sound all very harsh and it takes is just a little extra investment in computer
it cannot be said enough; No one can be an expert on knowledge.
everything. That's why I state, run for the best you can
do, not for Bill Gates chair. The male half of human kind So next time you find yourself confused with technics ask
is definitely not going to wait for the female half. If we you mother why she never bothered to explain. Ask your-
cannot keep up with the computer blitz the wall is build self why you have the right and reason why you should
and it will take yet again some heavy power to get it not start to make the difference yourself. Because the
down. That's a burden we cannot pass through on next handy Chimp females might die out, but at least we can
generation beta women. It would be unscience-fiction. take their lessons at heart. Do not throw away compu-
ter technical facts for males only. Learn it as best as you
The male population is also eager to see our role in com- can, use it and pass it through.
puter science. Besides for obvious social reasons there Since the media attention in the '80 hacking is mostly
are also computer specific reasons. Almost every soft- associated with bank burglary and destruction. Most of
ware program is created by a male. Programmers are beta that misperception originates from the 80's when com-
people and most of them proofed already at teens to be puter information was easily mixed with assumptions
able to get disconnected from outside world to focus for filling the gaps of knowledge.
several weeks on a personal project and belief. Most pro-
grammers confess some lack of social intuitive under- Besides the media-hyped excesses hacking is more;
standing. Software generated by large companies is Hacking is technical exploration beyond or sometimes
therefore most of the time designed by a group of without documentation. Best known are the incidents of
people with different tasks. The programmer is kept playful computer experts who hunt for security holes in
away from the user interface because it is clear to under- networks. Its their honor and part of the game to notify
standing that especially the user interface will make or the system administrators when a gap in security is
break a good piece of software. Programs we hate becau- found. But hacking is also changing software or hardware.
se all keys and buttons are too confusing could have been At the level of software it can be for good or the famous
totally different if only someone was there to under- evil. Not creating viruses and cracking software re-
stand and take over. Especially at that point computer gistration code persee but also changing an operating
science hoped for the inflow of women with a social in- system like Ms-Dos for personal conveni ence. On the
tuitive view on matters to make a change. We women hardware level it can range from redesigning the
could have told that pressing special key combinations functionality of old waste to getting complex hardware
like <SHIFT F7> takes both hands to do. And therefore such to run without a manual.
key combinations should only be preserved for rare used Another misperception is that a hacker is familiar with
program functions not for saving or printing a file. Take all techniques. As if a olds automobile fanatic has to be
a look at most programs and the opposite is true. A pro- involved with model airplanes. Most of the time a hacker
gram like Word Perfect for instance. is focussed on only one field, an innocent innovative
purpose. The result if good is often adopted by the in-
The most frequently used key combinations show the male ,dustry, with only a silent honor for the original hacker.
programmers view on ergonomics. But there are other Although it is an understatement that fashion is created
examples with Graphic User Interface programs like on the streets, the computer hacker is still seen by the
Netscape, the user is overwhelmed by a menu strip, but- public at large as dangerous instead as part of the
ton bar, sliders and extra push buttons everywhere engineers of future systems. Although for curious reasons
around in the window frame like broken keys and mail we accept serious bugs in big software like Windows NT,
envelopes. Why does no-one in the Netscape office stop hackers trace these bugs and by doing so pressure
the programmer with all that button voodoo which only Microsoft for the necessary repairs.

77
 Kathy Rae Huffman and Eva Wohlgemuth

FaCE SETTINGS

FACE SETTINGS is a female-focused communication questions about connectivity and online presence. We
project and Internet web site that reveals the growing Net have created an environment which we think is a 'female
community of women. Eva Wohlgemuth and Kathy Rae environment' on the net. This also means it does not have
Huffman host performing installations and cooking events, to have black backgrounds.
around the world, and connect women through IRC and
various Internet chat systems. FACE SETTINGS began in It is a well know fact that the Internet is a male
Spring, 1996 with the stated goal to join real groups of environment, populated by a mere 15% women in Europe.
women into a network strategy to expand female connec- Although statistics vary from survey to survey, all agree
tivity. Our plan is to engage women in discussions about that the fastest growing category of users in Europe are
Internet, virtuality, and their online presence --issues of (young) women. A strong online community of women
importance to each community-- during the traditional already exists in America and Australia, and terms like
female process of preparing meals and eating together. CyberFeminist or Grrrl are often used to describe web-
sites and ideas surrounding this topic. Along with FACE
Today, women don't have a dominant voice in the media, SETTINGS, we will show online communication projects
allthough they have a lot to say. The internet is really a that offer valuable services, information and resources
great environment for women, because people can't to women, and works that bring a fresh, feminist
interrupt what you're saying. Men can't interrupt you. You perspective to Net politics and theory.
can always finish your sentence online.
The questions FACE SETTINGS raises are various, and are
FACE SETTINGS investigates how women can use the evolving. We are personally invested in the process of
Internet environment to understand their own work establishing a female network, and establishing perso-
better, as well as other peoples lifes, other cultures, and nal links in each of the FACE SETTINGS locations. A
new potentials for collaborative future projects. There are fe.mailing list, FACES is a parallel activity that involves
no strict goals, only the establishment of an community approximately 100 media artists, critics and theoreticians
consisting of women involved with media, also artists and around the world.
other women who just want to communicate with us. We
share things online. We ask:
l. How do communication practices differ in various
We think that women are communicating differently cultural settings?
than men, and we somehow observe ourselves in dialo- 2. How are women kept out of the technically challen-
gue with other women. We have a theory, and there are ging network and what can be done to change this?
some women who are objecting it, who say that there 3. What are local (and traditional) communication prac-
is no difference in the basic communication between tices of women, and what might this project offer to local
women and men, women to women and men to men. They women's groups?
say its all the same. 4. What special stories, recipes, and traditions, reveal
http://www.thing.at/thing/face

the unique female contributions to cultural communica-

tion in each location?
5. How does the fact that women speak and communi-
cate differently than men affect our female involvement
in online culture?

We want to help assist women to build stronger

connections between each other in the online environ-
ment. We are especially interested in female mailing lists,
web projects, 3D spaces online, and international
emale-focused communication events, conferences, and
festivals.

Youll find an interview with Kathy about her online

A topical thing for us to discuss could be: if there is a acitivities at:
difference, should this difference be overcome? Is it
more interesting to live in a --more or less-- unified http://www.obn.org/boys/kathy.htm
communication world? Can I go to the female part of my
personality or to the male part, according to the mood or
situation? Our theory tries to explore these and other

78
Diana McCarty

What is Sadie Planting?

A review of Sadie Plants book: Zeros and Ones. Digital -- the zero that must be counted, imbalanced, dangerous
Women and the New Technologies -- her womb traveling, hysterically. Is this where her crea-
tivity, her will & desire to discover is located? Perhaps.
There it was. A quick, short mission accomplished. Silver Plant refuses to commit herself to one story. Instead, she
cover gleaming in the fluorescent light of the bookshop, opens doors, all of them, even the ones the don't yet exist.
alongside all the rest of the cyber readers and countless
anthologies. Just one, good thing for me that it wasn't Problematic: she embraces the notions of such thinkers
zero. In my hands: DIGITAL WOMEN + THE NEW TECH- as Freud and Irigaray, and remixes them. Are women dif-
NOCULTURE. I hadn't known this was the subtitle, under ferent? Of course. Is it all about genitalia? Why not? But
giant raised print that read ZEROS + ONES, and at the then she goes further, takes us through the main ologies
top, again in black, SADIE PLANT. The authoress. The that define and inform our now, our future. In and out,
cyberfeminist. Fresh from the first Cyberfeminst now and then. We see ourselves reflected in the ladies
International, and the hectic media arts circle, I was of the 19th Century, confined to the delicate pursuit of
cynical, excited, pumping with cyberfem enthusiasm, I botany, and where that led. Do you have any idea just how
wanted this to be good. I would learn from this book. important the lichen is? Or how the study of these fungi
became important in modern biology? Plant offers ano-
I was disappointed. Angry, troubled, deeply engrossed. ther way of reading the past. Not confining herself, or her
Where was the history of women in technology? Ada readers, to historical fact, she wields her mighty pen (key-
Lovelace? That's it? But I couldn't put it down. Like a good board more likely), quoting Freud, Lovelace, Dement,
(or bad) novel, I was mesmerized by the words, the flow, cyberpunk, Irigaray, a multitude of others, and Beatrix
the images. I wanted to talk about it. I mailed around, des- Potter!?
perately looking for somebody who I could rant with. I
couldn't stop thinking about it. Cyberfeminist? No, sure- Cleverly, she avoids the compromise of absolutes. She
ly she is joking. But the book has it merits. Not a history finds and follows threads just as far she needs them -
of women in technology? It is a lie? She has seduced me, the reader is left to ponder the connections. Plant has
along with all the rest of her readers. The silver cover, no fear of being illogical, irrational, neurotic, bitchy. And
the promising subtitle. I suspect that she is not worried about her womb wan-
dering. Almost fiction? Historical? No, much better, it is
Yet, once seduced, I cannot resist. She has put before me a daring hybrid. Plant refuses to give it all away. Just
much more. And I eat it up like candy. Ada, the brain, the read interviews with her. Does she ever give more? She
woman who invented programming, a perfect candida- will not explain what she meant. What did she say?
te for Freudian analysis -- put her on the couch, ask her
about how she feels about her father. Redeeming the zero, It is positivist, techno-utopianist, techno-determinist and
and going on to examine how and where it appears all the other bad things you've heard or thought. But it
throughout western culture. How can women, feminists, is not only that. Instead Plant carves a space of difference
cyberfeminists, dismiss this book? This writer? No tra- out of nothing, out of zero. Contradictory, but she never
ditional academic, Plant refuses to conform to gende- pretends that this is the final word. Yet it is precise in
red codes of relaying information. She does not adhere its own way. The logic here is based on Freud's view of
to the codes of writing theoretically, historically. No women, and how he characterizes us -- of the myths of
neatly presented argument logically followed by sub- science, how we, as women, are seen in the eyes cold
stantiating, factual information. hard light of rational thought. She embraces it all and turns
it around and in doing so, she smartly critiques the
Yet it is readable, and pleasurable, informative. We know unquestioned paradigms of logical thought. She shows
Freud was a bastard, that he reduced women to zero, to us that it is possible to relate real and valuable information
empty, to lack. But Plant capitalizes on it. She starts without a dependence on traditional forms. Despite her
with Ada's story, but is that the beginning? She weaves reliance on female behavioral stereotypes, Plant is plan-
(inspired I'd say) her way through Ada's life and world, ting seeds for a much deeper discussion.
through time, and back again. Ada as archetypal woman

79
 CENSORED INFORMaTION

NOAM CHOMSKY ANALYSES THE HAITI-U.S.A. CONNECTION

The installation CENSORED INFORMATION is a com- against the exiled President Aristide and the current
mentary about censorship in the media demonstrated by functioning of world organisations such as the United
the artist using as the subject-matter the severe human Nations and the World Bank.
rights abuses during the Haitian military coup.
The texts were documented by the artist during several
The installation consists of two parts, whereby Part I, interviews she conducted with Chomsky, a follow-up to
PRIVATE SPACE documents the results of Part II: PUBLIC their earlier collaboration, when Chomsky was involved
SPACE. as the American protagonist in the award-winning docu-
mentary Babeth co-produced and directed HAITI: KILLING
PRIVATE SPACE consists of two televisionsets that both THE DREAM.
http:/www.desk.nl/~haiti-if/main.html

show images of a Haitian woman, mutilated severely by

the Haitian military, because she had a poster hanging The installation tries to evoke a commitment by the
in her house of the first democratically elected President viewer to look for real information about world affairs
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. and enables them to listen to an in-depth analysis of the
Haitian struggle by Noam Chomsky via headphones.
Her head is slashed open by a machete-knife and her left
hand and forearm are chopped off. She was found on a
heap of dead corpses on a massgrave, left there by the
military who thought that she was dead. The 2 monitors
show images of her before and after the mutilation. The
images are shown as freeze frames on two TV-sets,
superimposed, so that it requires a bit more of a
commitment by the viewer to decipher the gruesome
documents. The TV-sets are completely covered in lead,
a material reference to the poisinous content of dis-
information and manipulated meaning of nowadays TV-
news information as it arrives in peoples homes.

PUBLIC SPACE shows excerpts of computerized texts by

Noam Chomsky who analyses the political arena from
which part I is the result:
the Haitian military coup, the role of the C.I.A. and the
U.S. in the coup, the media-disinformationcampaign

80
Ingrid Molnar

BORDERCROSSING FEMINISM _CYBERFEMINISM

One of the essential human rights is the entirety of body and only cultural meeting place can escape to the cyber-
- of the own body - to own the own body. This also inclu- space. Especially because in most of the cases to go onli-
des the belly and so "Mein Bauch gehrt mir" was one ne for joining a chat on the net with somebody far away
of the most famous demands of feminsm in the 70s to - would cause a big amount of costs. To call a provider
claim the right of abortion. (most of the time more than 50km away) would be a long
distance call.... and in this case to go online costs "as
"PREGNANT" does not mean "with child" here Cassells much as travelling....." So we simply cannot meet coun-
dictionary is definitly wrong. Since I am fertile - I know trygirls on the net - cyberfeminism, as feminism in the
that sex with male humans - even using contraceptions 70s, takes place in the big cities all over the world but
- can cause pregnancy, but this has not to cause mater- usally does not cross the border to the countryside.
nity. "Make pregnant" must not mean "Put the girl in the
family way." And since the middle of the 70s in many And here one of the reasons, why feminism did not exist
countries all over the world abortion during the first 10 in the countries associated to the former CCCR. In East-
(or even 24) weeks of pregnancy with the help of a gyn- Germany abortion was considered to be one of the pos-
naecologist can take place. In Austria for example - it is sibilities of contraception since the 60s and as women
legal for 23 years, but in the countryside it is still near- from the former CCCR told me - beside condoms - it was
ly impossible to do it. In this little country where Im the only one. Curettage was the most used method (and
coming from, in the 70s not the politics - but the con- I am afraid it still is). Sometimes there was not enough
servativ doctors caused problems by not giving the per- tinned blood and women bleeded to death. The women
mission for withdraw by suction. So the feminists did not of the eastern countries in Europe wanted - and still
demand to legalize abortion but legalize suction - but only want - better medical care. But they want it for their
in Vienna and some other big cities it was and is possi- parents, husbands, friends and sons - as well as daught-
ble. Did feminism only take place in big cities? In the ers, too. This is just one of the examples, why feminism
countryside lack of infrastucture, traditional family struc- and womens movement differ from east and west and
ture, church as the only cultural institution gives social there is also a big difference between north and south.
control and patriachy place. Social networks are essen- How strong religion can influence politics we learned in
tial and that means contro, if you try to escape - restric- summer 1998. The gouvernment of Portugal has pro-
tions follow. blems to legalize abortion and Hoechst stopped the pro-
duction of RU 486 (allowed in England, France and
In West-Germany in the 70s it was a political matter and Sweden), because of the protests of the catholic church
abortion stayed unlegal until 1992. But during this time, and no ideological support from any gouvernment in
under certain circumstances it was allowed to do it. But Europe.
the necessary circumstances differt a lot from one part In the USA abortion is allowed - during the whole preg-
of the country to the other. So in 1988 a gynnaecologist nancy. In China, it can cause problems, when a woman
in the wounderful countryside of bavaria was put on his gets more than two children. And I am sure cruel things
trial for doing abortion under circumstances, which would happen in the case of abortion in Iran. The "real life" of
not have been unlegal in an other parts of the country (as women seems to differ a lot. This are just few thoughts
long as tax is paid) and about 200 of his patients and their about one of the main topics of feminism, but in my opi-
friends and husbands were found guilty, too. Wondering nion an important one. Even in Europe in countries, where
what is going on in Memmingen and how could it hap- economy and social structure does not difffer so much,
pen we started to visit the trial and most of the time, we we have big gaps in field of contraception and abortion
were the only visitors. Some women, who lived in the sur- - and I am sure this causes different behavior in the (hete-
roundings wanted to watch the trial, tried to get to town ro) sex life - but does it also effect our virtual life? Can
but could not manage it, because somebody else needed girls and women really enjoy virtual life as long as they
the car and without it they could not make it from the vil- are struggeling for a minimum of freedom, for example
lage to the nearby town, as we found out during sever- a room for their own, food and medical care in their phy-
al interviews. The trial already was going on for months, sical state of life? Listening to Corinne Petrus how fast
and there were no reports or protest in media until a Webgrrls movement developed in the Netherlands - the
demonstration with thousands of visitors from other mekka of abortion in Europe. In a country, where law and
region - cities - was organized. There we met some activ order includes the demands of the feminism of the 70s
feminists of the 70s - living and working in cities and one girls are already grrls and go online easily. And arent all
of them said- "Maybe we have forgotten the countrysi- those grrls who developed a certain grrrl power living in
de and now they hint us here." Can cyberfeminsm help countries where abortion during the first 12 weeks (and
in cases like that? Now, ten years later are there enough even later) is legal and not only available in big cities and
girls and women online, but also in the countryside ? medical support is on a high level? Netherlands, USA,
England and Scottland - and what is going on in Ireland
I wonder, if girls and women living in this closed circuit - were abortion is still unlegal?
of patriachate with the chorus of the church as the one

81
 Gudrun Teich

Dolled up
"Dolled up" is a video-projection from 1995. I was com-
missioned by the German TV Station, WDR, to edit a short
piece about the Pret--porter in Paris, in which the bodies
of the models were decorated on the catwalk like living
display dummies in order to present the dresses. The desi-
gners moved around them like racehorse owners move
around their favorites.

At this time, in the world of fashion, the phenomenon of

supermodels developed, women who gained the status
of superstars, like only musicians and actors had in the
80s. Models used to be nameless. Now it's predominantly
their names which are commercialized -- rather than
the designer's names whose clothes they wear.

I used these bodies, that have been stylized as idols, in

five video sequences which show the typical turn of the
supermodels at the end of the catwalk. Frame by frame,
I separated the dresses from the body or respectively the
body from the dresses with the paintbox. As a result the
dresses seemed to move by themselves, and the absen-
ce of the bodies became visible via contour and volume.

Clothes have often been described as a second skin. In

"Dolled-up" each moves as an empty shell or wrapping
of something that is not there anymore, and turns depres-
singly around itself.

As a projection the dress-shell moves for a minute befo-

re turns into another through computer morphing.
Lifesized, they are projected onto the wall, dancing a per-
manently repeated, monotonous rhythm that makes the
computer animated dresses appear like statues or robots.
Like the logo of a prestigious company.

As a projection the dress-shell moves for a minute befo-

re they turn into another one with the help of computer-
morphing. Lifesized they are projected on the wall, dance
a permanently repeated monotonous rhythm that makes
the computeranimated dresses appear like statues or
robots. Like the logo of a prestigious company.

82
Stills from the video installation Dolled-up

83
 Data DJ Ina Wudtke

Life has become more complex in the overwhelming sea senting: german soldiers (1998), german boy group fans
of information. Since '68 the poststructualistic theory (1997), women on german magazine covers (1996), women
describes the dead of the 'Subjekt' and has replaced it in german TV (1996), women in my hood/germany
by setting plural denotations of culture and identity. hamburg, karolinenviertel (1996), hip hop teenagers in N.Y.
(1995), hip hop teenagers in germany (1992-93). The
http://www.thing.de/neid

I formed a multiple personality: I'm artist, DJ T-INA and rows of body images are specimens of characters of a
editor of the NEID Magazin. Three or more identities complex script. Whether taken as live portraits, the pic-
changing, replaceable, shifting. This 'additude' is a cul- ture tube or glossy covers, my photographs are descrip-
tural form of life that refers to a world of 'differences' and tions of images. They discribe how individuals and iden-
'mille plateaux' (Deleuze/Guatari) as well as to a never tities are modeled not only through language. The bodies
ending network. No traditional static denotated 'Subjekt' are battlefields of urban culture, -gender clichees, and -
can keep up with this way of life only this quicksilver type logos proudly presented on clothes and skin.
of 'shizophrenia personality' (with a method).
All this was important when 'we' (Ina Wudtke, Claudia
Some of the very static and common identity models Reinhardt, Heiko Wichmann) founded 'NEID' (the german
german culture offers to the germans is the theme of my: word for envy, relating to Sigmund Freuds 'Penis envy).
'Foto Notes'. Right now there exist 7 serials. Each of them Since 1994 there is a molecular collective of internatio-
contains 60 portraits taken in a classic portrait cut way. nal authors, performers, musicians, filmers, program-
Compiled together in various combinations, the series mers, haidressers, artists, layouters, fashiondesigners etc.
become studies of both variety and stereotypes of ges- working interdisciplinary (Bettina Bartzen, Lars Bulenheim,
tural expression and body image. There are series re-pre- Lucian Busse, H.CH. Dany, Jan Diedrich, Tanja Dckers,

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Kai Dnnhlter, Alexandra Filipp, FeedBUCK & Galore, Ulf In 1997 me, myself and I were continually cooperating
Freyhoff, Peter Frhner, Andreas Gram, Honey Suckles, as a DJ with videoartist Ulf Freyhoff and german Poet Ina
Barbara Jung, Hans Kroier, Ina Kurz, Pia Lanzinger, Simone Kurz. In this time we really started to make each media
Leiffert, Bianca Ludewig, Jessika Martin, Elke aus dem interact to really come to a data-mixing and -distorting
Moore, Ellen Nonnenmacher, Claudia Reinhardt, Dirk that creates a certain atmosphere out of a thousand
Rohe, Christian Roosen, Hinrich Sachs, Erik Schmidt, Lori inputs.
Shy, Julia Solis, Nalla Smith, Paul Snowden, Inga Svala
Thorsdottir, Dirk Uhlig, Felix Velasco, Heiko Wichmann, We are constantly working on changing the meaning of
Birgit Wudtke and lots of others. (german) words around (rap/ slang/poetry), mixing it up
with some spicy english or other languages, combine it
NEID is a transmedial project. Once a year we publish a with Sound and a vision, sample it loop it, put it new
magazin, all the people mentioned in this text took part together work it... we prefer to do this 'live' cause that's
on it. But we also do shows, music events, parties, what creates 'mad styles' (refering to grafitti's style-
readings, performances and movie shows. My persona- wars) that changes all the time and never comes out
lity Ina Wudtke tha NEID Magazina takes care of all exactly in the same way. As a DJ I work with everything
organisation work concerning money and spaces and my mixer is offering: cutting, pitch, transforming, mixing
coordinating participants as well as participating as an one track over an other, change equaliser, using effects
artist. You can also call my profession: 'art work mixer' like delay, (always) flanger, reverb and so on. I try to keep
- the method woman. my selection of LP's very open. That means I combine all
types of music like film music, slideshow soundtracks,
The other personality of mine: DJ T-INA is heavily involved hip hop, house, soul, fairytale records for kids, classical
into 'word, sound, vision' events. My interest is a com- orchester, speeches etc ... still I mix it in a certain way
bination of this three elements. The magazine as a refe- that it all comes together just right. Someone who listens
rence to the'scripture and writing tradition' of western to my mixes can take it for granted that I mean what is
culture needs a heavy 'oral culture' workspace to talk said and mixed there as a 'mood sculpture'. But like DJ
about all the identities that will never be expressed in Spooky said: 'So many people hear but do not'!
'downwritten' words (as may be Linston Kwesy Johnson
would express it...) . Especially in Germany I do see peoply trying to fulfil a
certain livestyle that tells you to go to clubs and buy
'Word 'means here the 'spoken word'/'club poetry'/ Dub certain CD's but there's just no sensibility and no
Poetry, coming out of a tradition of african oral culture ability to distinguish styles, mix methodes, sound and so
you can find in clubs and cafs all over the world on. Germany nowadays suffers a lot from Nazi-
(especially in London and N.Y.C). 'Sound' contains: noise, Deutschland that has really managed to kill all important
music with and without beats, tone-quality concerning cultural workers or making them leave the country. Mixing
mostly the equipement you are using as an asthetic fragments, re-combining potential, giving it a new
standpoint... 'Vision' refers to:slideshows, digital live meaning, like future without a past that is what young
videomixes which are projected, power of thoughts, hal- urban 'Data-DJ' culture is working on.
lucinations, monitor views...
Please check for detailed information our web pages Whatever I'm doing - music, magazin, fotos, the only
(created by Heiko Wichmann): thing that is for sure is the constant change. That's my
object of asthetic effort, acting like a data dj: compiling,
<http://www.thing.de/neid> mixing, re-presenting.

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 biographical notes
and more urls:
- Susanne Ackers ducing with Banff Center for the Arts, Canada and DeWaag,
art historian, lives and works in Berlin and Skvde, Sweden, Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam.
founding member of the Old Boys Network. She is experienced - Valentina Djordjevic
in multi-media project management and teaches art history as lives and works in Berlin. She is studying literature, was wor-
senior lecturer at the Hgskolan in Skvde, Sweden. king with "Internationale Stadt Berlin", is founding member of
- Irina Aktuganova Old Boys Network and member of mikro.e.V.
lives in St.Petersburg with her husband and daughter. She gra- <http://www.mikro.org>, an initiative to support media-cultu-
duated from St.Petersburg Academy of Fine arts in art-history res in Berlin. Vali is in charge of the "Media Arts Lab" in
and art-theory. She was working for state museums and exhi- Knstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, and wrote a study on
bition halls in Siberia until 1988, writing for central magazins "Netiquette" for the Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin.
and newspapers at the same time. Since 1988 Irina is involved <http://duplox.wz-berlin.de/texte/vali/>
in St.Petersburg artmarket, opened a commercial gallery, got - Marina Grzinic
money and invested in the non-profit Gallery 21. Since 1995 she lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia, received her Ph.D. in
is dealing with new media as a director and owner of Gallery Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana. Marina has worked
21, organizing the Cyber-Femin-Club on the base of Gallery collaboratively in the field of videoart
21, together with Alla Mitrofanova. Currently they are opening and installation for 17 years.
the internet studio, and organizing workshops for women.
- Sabine Helmers
- Ulrike Bergermann ethnologist, lives and works in Berlin.
is working in literature and media studies and in the women's
- Kathy Rae Huffman
cultural center of Bremen, teaching at the Univerisity of
She is Associate Professor of Electronic Art at Rensselaer
Hamburg. Working fields are concepts of several media:
Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, New York, since August 1998
pictures, writing, women et al. Doctoral thesis about sign lan-
and curator for the Van Gogh TV Virtual Museum System. She
guage notation.
was based in Europe since 1991, working freelance as a
- Josephine Bosma specialist in networking and metadesign. She has curated
lives and works in Amsterdam. She has been making radio pro- numerous programs and lectured at festivals and arts in
grams since 1991, first was involved in Radio Patapoe, an stitutes. In Vienna she was associate of HILUS, created the
Amsterdam pirate radio station, where she did art radio, re- Internet projects FACE SETTINGS and SIBERIAN DEAL together
porting and, mostly, a mix of these, focusing on "an investiga- with Eva Wohlgemuth. Together with Margarete Jahrmann
tion of the body in human perception of the world and its she created pop~TARTS, an interactive writing project for the
exchanges with it". Later she worked at the Dutch cultural Telepolis online journal. She co-moderates the female-only
radio/tv "organization" VPRO. After that Josephine "went into" mailing list FACES.
new media through the idea of media as extensions of the
- Vesna Jankovic
nervous system - through her fascination for the internet as a
is former chief editor and now director of ARKZIN (antiwar-
focal point for communication and interhuman relations and as
campaign) magazine, is an activist feminist organizer and
a place where the interconnectedness of disciplines --art,
writer who lives in Zagreb, Croatia.
politics, philosophy, economy, sociology-- is quite remarkable
and obvious. She organized the radio section of the next5minu- - Margarete Jahrmann
tes conference in Amsterdam, 1995. From the beginning of 1996 freelance writer, curator and mediamatic artist, lives in Vienna.
she started writing -- interviews (about net.art, net.radio, cyber- Trained at the Hochschule fr Angewandte Kunst, Vienna;
feminism), later also her own texts. Together with Rasa Smite Audiovisuals Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam; degree in
she was responsible for the radio shows of the First communication theory. Since 1993 art CD-Rom programming,
Cyberfeminist International. since 1994 net projects, 1997 DJing lectures, 1998 Superfem-
Performances. Workingfields: artistic internet/audiac-perfor-
- Shu Lea Cheang
mances, internetprojects, multimediaworks, articles, presen-
was once a New York based installation artist/filmmaker, now
tations and programming of art and mediatheory events. Co-
a cyberhomesteader managing a digital existence. Her video
founder of the columne pop~Tarts on female netculture in 96,
installations, structured to activate cross-cultural collaboration,
for the Telepolis online magazine.
include COLOR SCHEMES (1990, Whitney Museum, New York),
<http://www.konsum.net/fem>,
The AIRWAVES PROJECT (1991, Capp Street Project, San
Intertwinedness:<http://interwine.aec.at>
Francisco), Those Fluttering Objects of Desire (1993, Whitney
Pop~Tarts: <http://www.ix.de/tp/deutsch/pop/default.html>
Museum Biennale Exhibition, New York). Her feature film
FRESH KILL was premiered at Berlin International Film Festival - Verena Kuni
(1994) and included in the Whitney Museum Biennale Exihibition art historian m.a., studied art history, literature, media
(1995). science and psychology at the universities of marburg and
hamburg, currently assistant at the dept. of art theory/fine
Over the past few years, she has done installations that tra- arts, university of mainz. ph.d. project on mythologizations of
verse actual and virtual spaces: Bowling Alley (1995, Walker the artist in contemporary art and art theory. works as free lance
Art Center, Minneapolis), net-links a local bowling lane with the author, critic, content consultant and curator. publications in the
Walker Art Center's gallery space and www. Elephant Cage field of art history, cultural history, contemporary arts and
Butterfly Locker (1996, Atopic Site Exhibition, Tokyo, traces media issues (http://www.kunst.uni-mainz.de/~kuni/public.htm).
US radar detect in Okinawa. Buy One Get One (1997, awarded computer & net activities: started early with the use of com-
2nd prize, NTT/ICC Biennale Exhibition, Tokyo; part of the 2nd puters to get ahead with her rosty typewriter, lurked at festi-
Johannesburg Biennale special project), locates net-access in vals like ars electronica, worked as "data-banker" for a
Africa and Asia with a bento digi-suitcase. scientific image archive, jobbed for a little software company
http://www.ntticc.or.jp/HoME specialized in network systems, former member of The Thing
At present, she is working on a website feature project bbs, later more and more addicted to internet and www. cur-
BRANDON with the Guggenheim Museum Soho and co-pro- rently runs the weekly "the thing rundbrief", a newsletter for

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frankfurt/m. on art, club & cultural politics and a mailing list - Helene von Oldenburg
for feminist art historians (sektion frauenforschung im ulmer lives in Rastede and Hamburg, Germany. Helene holds a doc-
verein). publications on and in the net (see above and tor's degree of Agricultural Science and studied visual arts at
http://www.kunst.uni-mainz.de/~kuni/nettext.htm). the Hochschule fr bildende Knste Hamburg. She is member
- Olia Lialina of obn. Selection of works: "Der Imaginale Ort IV", Kunsthalle
lives and works in Moscow. She is net artist, critic and Hamburg (1991), "Nine Sculptures New York 1993", The Thing
curator. Olia is founder of the "Art.Teleportacia" gallery. Since <http://www.thing.net>, "Information Molecules" a research pro-
1996 she is director of "CINE FANTOM" Film Club, co- ject in futurology (1994), " Traces of Future. New Ways of
organizer of the "CINE FANTOM" festival, author of lectures. Experimental Arachnology", Fernerkundung, TheaLit, bersee
Contributing editor of 4 RUSSIAN VIDEO ART AND ALTERNA- Museum, Bremen (1996), "SpiderFeminism" (1997),
TIVE VIDEO compilations "HISTORY OF PARALLEL FILM". "The Mars Gallery", together with Claudia Reiche (1998)
<http://www.obn/the_mars_gallery >
- Vesna Manojlovic <http://www.obn.org/the_web_page>
Vesna, or Becha as her friends call her, is an internet operator
for radio B92in Belgrade, and she also organises exhibitions and - Corrine Petrus
other presentations in the B92 cultural space, called Cinema lives and works in Rotterdam. She is a computer-programmer
Rex. At the moment she is studying Dutch, as she plans to emi- with a great interest in communication and in people. In the
grate to the Netherlands in the beginning of 1998. There is a beginning of1996 she founded the Webgrrls Chapter in Holland
plan to start an internet/digital arts 'department' at cinema Rex, and Belgium. Quit Wengrrls in 1997. Now Corrine has her own
for which negotiations are taking place. This might be called Computer Consultancy Business called Webdiva
Cyber-Rex, or C-Rex. There is no net.connection to C-Rex, as (http://www.webdiva.nl) and is chairwoman a the new orga-
the connection B92 has is already a very special one, and had nisation Tech Women ( http://www.tech-women.nl )
to be applied for via special diplomatic channels due to the - Julianne Pierce
embargo against Serbia. Net.art will therefore be presented un- is a new media producer, writer and curator. She is a founding
plugged. member of the collaborative computer art group VNS Matrix,
Quote: "It was a woman that opened my eyes that women are who are currently developing an interactive game called BAD
always organising things for men. Somebody wrote about this CODE, (prototype funded by the Australian Film Commission).
on the Faces-mailinglist, after Siggraph. Women are organisers She has curated several new media events including 'Code Red'
there. Also in C3 women are the organisers..., the director of (international and Australian artists investigating new media
Cinema Rex is a woman.., the next person organizing things in and information technologies, November 1997); 'Critical Media'
Cinema Rex is also a woman, the artdirector there is also a for the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art (October 1995)
woman, that's strange." (from an interview with Josephine and 'Future Languages' with VNS Matrix (Artists' Week, 1994
Bosma, done in Kassel, during the last block in Hybrid Adelaide Festival). She is the inaugural moderator for the
Workspace) :::recode::: internet mailing list, an Australian based forum for
- Diana McCarty discussion on new media culture. Julianne has represented
Dangerous McCarty, American Intelligence Agent, based in Australia at several international exhibitions and conferences
Budapest, is into conference co-ordination and snappy dressing, including ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Art),
and apart from being an expert in dealing with troublesome Ars Electronica and in Sept 1997, participated in the First
net.artists, she's also a notable socialiste and a dab hand at Cyberfeminist International meeting (Hybrid Workspace) at
social networking. She's very outspoken, neurotic, friendly, Documenta X in Germany. She is on the Board of the Australian
intelligent, and American. She has a sense of humour, is a Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) and Artspace. She has
little paranoid and extrovert. She drinks a lot, smokes like a an Arts Degree from Flinders University and a post-graduate
chimney and she cares about the environment. She's also degree in Women's Studies from the University of Adelaide.
instrumental in creating Mailing Lists (nettime, FACES). Diana :::recode::: - http://sysx.apana.org.au/recode/
McCarty is infamous for hacking into electronic art and cultu- Code Red - http://www.anat.org.au/projects/codered/
re conferences and uploading editorial on various websites about VNS Matrix - http://sysx.apana.org.au/artists/vns
them. Thats when the rumours began that she was indeed a - Daniela Alina Plewe
CIA spy since she was very active in the Eastern European lives in Berlin, studies in Philosophy, Literature and Anthropology
Underground media scene. Most important: She thinks that the and Video at Universit de Paris VIII. 1991-95 member of the
internet will be taken over by women in the future. "It will AI-group "Logic, Theories of Knowledge and In-formation" at
eventually be controlled by a small number of robots pro- Freie Universitt Berlin. 1995 project-artist at ZKM, Center for
grammed by powerful women with big hair". Arts and Media, Karlsruhe. 1995 grant of French Embassy,
- Alla Mitrofanova Bonn. 1998 grant of Senate of Berlin. International presenta-
lives in St. Petersburg. She graduated from St.Petersburg tions, lectures and exhibitions.
University as art historian and philosopher. Alla is a writer, cura- - Barbara Rechbach
tor and editor of the internet magazine "Virtual Anatomy": lives in vienna and london. ma hypermedia studies at the uni-
<http://www.dux.ru/vir> versity of westminster, london. working with digital media - inter-
1990-94 main topics were nomadic subjectivity and nomadic active multimedia, video, photography. background in
semiotics, theory of m electronic arts and communication theory at the academies for
1995-98 topics: body theory, post-information theory. applied arts in linz and vienna; member of "freie klasse", wien
(open class vienna), university of applied arts in vienna; co-edi-
- Ingrid Molnar tor of the vienna based magazine "test".
independant filmmaker, lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.
Trained in Visual Communication at the Hochschule fr - Claudia Reiche
bildende Knste, Hamburg, (Acadamie of fine arts), Diploma in lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. She holds a M.A. and
1989. Working with photography since 1979, founding a Diploma in Visual Communication. She is a literary and media
member of the "Fotogalerie Wien". Selection of her films: scientist, author, performer and does educational work at the
"EDV registered", "Tangential" Hamburg/Marseille, Days University of Hamburg and at the Academy for Fine Arts
Counting, "Mutter aus Passion" ("Mother out of passion"), a docu- Braunschweig. Claudia is staffmember of the Women's Culture
mentary about abortion, "Make a Wish", "Jadebusen", "Vita & House TheaLit Bremen, (concept and organisation of "Knstliches
Bella". Ingrid is working free-lance as cameraoperator and edi- Leben:// Mediengeschichten", international laboratory on media
tor, and is doing screendesign and programming since 1995. art and theory). Actually she is member in the VW-research
- Ellen Nonnenmacher project at the University of Hamburg "Krperbilder. Mediale
was trained to be an artist in Hamburg. She was co-founder of Verwandlungen des Menschen in der Medizin" ("Bodyimages.
frauen und technik (women and technology), the once famous Medial transformations of man in medicine"), directed by Prof.
"-Innen", and she enjoyed being an old boy for a while. Her hard- Marianne Schuller, focussing on "Living pictures, medical visua-
disk is located in Berlin. lization, artificial life and electronic entertainment",

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 especially the Visible Human Project. Claudia is a cyberfeminist - Gudrun Teich
member of the Old Boys Network. Together with Helene von video artist, living in Dsseldorf, Germany. She was trained at
Oldenburg she is curating "The Mars Gallery", the first international the art academy in Dsseldorf (Nam June Paik, Nan Hoover) and
and interplanetarian exhibition space for fine arts on Mars. did post-graduate studies in Multimedia at the KHM, Cologne.
Gudrun is working free-lance in postproduction for TV stations.
- Rasa Smite She is organizing exhibitions and events and is running the
is a famous net.radio acitivist living and working in Riga, Latvia. X Object Space in Dsseldorf together with Ute Hrner, Mathias
Together with Josephine Bosma she was responsible for the Antlfinger and Petr Zubek. Selection of her works: "Das
cyberfeminist radio shows of the First Cyberfeminist Gesprch" (The Conversation"), "In Schale geworfen" ("Dolled-
International. up"), "Ein Ort" ("A Place"), "Haut" ("Skin"), "Videoportraits"
- Cornelia Sollfrank ("Video Portraits"), "Und immer wieder ...NICHTS" ("Again and
is an artist, lives and works in Hamburg and Berlin. Central to again ... NOTHING").
her conceptual and performative works are the changing - Kerstin Weiberg
notions of art, the advent of a new image of the artist in the lives in Berlin, studied art in Braunschweig, Barcelona, Berlin
information age, gender-specific handling of technology, new and Amsterdam. 1994 Diploma in the field of performance and
forms of disseminating art, as well as networking and com- new media. Free-lanced work in the field of multi media in-
munication as art. She was a member of the female artist stallation and performance, collaboration with KONIC Theatre,
groups "frauen-und technik" and "-Innen", and founding mem- Barcelona. Since 1995 collaboration with Richard Schtz.
ber of the first cyberfemininist organisation "Old Boys Network". 1996 -1999, staff at the Fachhochschule Potsdam, developing
- Josephine Starrs a multi media presentation about the daily life of prisoners of
is an Australian new media artist who has a schizoid relationship the concentration camp Sachsenhausen between 1936 and
to new technologies. While entranced with the playful possi- 1945 for the memorial and museum Sachsenhausen.
bilities of the medium, she maintains a healthy paranoia of its - Faith Wilding
obsessions and controlling implications. She is a member of the born and brought up in South America by German refugees in
cyberfeminist artist collective, VNS Matrix, whose early per- a religious commune, emigrated to the US in l962 and active
formance work in virtual communities used irony and humour in the civil rights and anti-war movements, active in the women's
to reveal the gendered biases hard wired into computer culture. liberation movement, worked in Southern California with Judy
Her video "White" made in collaboration with Francesca da Chicago, Lucy Lippard, and others to found the Feminist Art
Rimini explores the language of madness to create a hyperre- movement and the Feminist Art Program (an educational pro-
al vision of alienation, psychic disturbance and transcenden- gram for women), active in feminist organziations both politi-
ce and has been screened in Europe, Australia and the US. cal and cultural, member of Heresies (the first US magazine on
feminist politics and culture), and of WAC (Women's Action
She worked with Leon Cmielewski to produce the CD-ROM "User Coalition). artist who works in many media including audio,
Unfriendly Interface", an ironic look at the hype surrounding drawing, painting, installation, and now a little WEB work.
cyberculture. In 1997 they were artists in residence at the written and published a lot on issues of feminism, art, and poli-
Knstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin where they made and exhibi- tics, teaching at universities and colleges for almost 30 years,
ted the installation "Diagnostic Tools for the new Millenium". currently a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
Starrs and Cmielewski are currently artists in residence at the actively pioneering interdisciplinary courses about media and
Banff Centre for the Arts, where they are working on a new performance and women's relationship to technology and tech-
media co-production entitled 'Dream Kitchen.' noscience, actively exhibiting artist also. anarchist, deeply
http://newweb.banff.org/projects/starrs/starrs&cmielewski.html interested in activist politics and in being part of the conver-
http://sysx.apana.org.au/artists/vns/ sation of her time. Finds Cyberfeminism a promising new wave
http://newweb.banff.org/projects/starrs/ of (post)feminist thinking and practice.
- Barbara Strebel - Eva Wohlgemuth
is a soft social engineer. She studied cultural anthropology, arts lives and works as an artist in Vienna. She was trained as a pain-
(art history) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and ter at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (1979) and worked as
video-art in Basel (CH). She spent most of her life cross a teacher for many years. At this time she explored and deve-
crossing the atlantic. loped her original "Systems"-work. In 1989, she began (partialy
- Rena Tangens in collaboration with Andreas Baumann -CH) System I - "Around
artist, lives and works in Bielefeld, Germany. Experimental Vienna", a conceptual location sculpture that would lead her
film, video and free radio work. Founded the gallery and art pro- around the world.
ject "Art d'Ameublement" together with her friend and Eva Wohlgemuths interest in electronic networks grew out of
colleague padeluun in 1984. They organized many exhitibitions her work of linking physical spaces to virtual realms. System
there, among them an event in 1985 with their hacker friends X Siberian Deal, 1995/96 ( in collaboration with Kathy Rae
from the CCC Hamburg. She brought the first modem onto Huffman) is a virtual real travel and exchange project between
documenta (d8!) and women into the Chaos Computer Club. the West and East, and comprised an on- line travel diary sent
They initiated the monthly cultur technology event PUBLIC from the road and the building up of a website, promoting a
DOMAIN in Bielefeld in early 1987 and is curator of this ongoing network community with Eastern Europe.
series since then. They founded the association FoeBuDe.V. <http://www.t0.or.at/~siberian/>
and the BIONIC bbs in Bielefeld and took active part in the deve- "Face Settings" started in autumn 1996 with a Real/Virtual
lopment of the German political, non-commercial networks Interface to initiate and establish communication amongst
Z-NETZ and/CL as well as ZaMir Transnational Network in women in Europe and oversees.It resulted in the female mai-
former Yugoslavia. They always supported privacy and encryp- linglist "Faces" - (in collaboration with Kathy Rae Huffman)
tion, published with FoeBuD the first PGP manual in German <http://thing.at/faces/>
language. Since 1990 software design for ZERBERUS and Topic Project: Psychic mapping , cartografie und personal body-
CHARON mail and news systems. systems, derived from a 3D fullbody scan.
<http://thing.at/bodyscan/>
Rena does scientific research on androcentrism in the net-
- Ina Wudtke
work, published a book on women in the networks, is lecturing,
giving seminars and consultancy on network, culture, sustain- diploma at Hochschule fr Bildende Knste, Hamburg/Germany
ability and education for organisations, companies as well as (B.J. Blume). Founded 1992 together with Claudia Reinhardt the
the Enquete-Kommission of the German Bundestag. Magazine NEID. Brought the project NEID (=envy) on a higher,
extended level (transmedial works/shows ). Works with Vision,
Recent artwork: "wiwiwi - nang nang nang", babylonian com- Sound, Word. Since 1992 working on a foto project called
munication model. Exhibited in Graz, at European Media Art 'foto-studies' wich is are groups of protraits showing german
Festival and at Earth Wire, East Cleveland. cultural stereotypes. Lived in N.Y./Hamburg. Moved to Berlin.

88